A handful of data center developers have stopped negotiating with towns that blocked them and started suing instead.
According to Bloomberg Law, several developers have filed lawsuits against counties and towns that passed bans or moratoriums on new data center construction. In Hill County, Texas, the first county in the state to pass a one-year ban, a developer sued arguing officials lacked the authority to impose it. The county rescinded the law within a week, and the case was dismissed. In Hawkins County, Tennessee, a cryptocurrency mining operation sued over a similar ban, arguing its due process and equal protection rights were violated, while the county's lawyers countered that "data centers take a lot more than they give in a place like Hawkins County."
This isn't just an AI story. It's a fight over who gets to say no to any large, power-hungry computing facility, crypto mines included, as communities grow wary of the water use, noise, and electricity price spikes these sites bring. The Trump administration has even pushed big cloud providers, utilities, and state officials to sign a "ratepayer protection pledge" promising to cover their own infrastructure costs, a tacit admission that the backlash is real.
One Pennsylvania town offered a data center developer 43 conditions on noise, water, and decommissioning instead of an outright ban. The developer called that "too difficult," and suing city hall turned out to be the easier ask.