Data Center Moratoriums

As of June 1, 2026, the path to broad statewide data center moratoriums remained closed, but narrower ratepayer- and resource-protection laws continued to advance. Florida Governor DeSantis signed SB 484 on May 7 — taking effect July 1 — barring utilities from passing data center costs onto residential and small-business ratepayers, requiring large-scale users (50+ MW) to pay their full cost of service, tightening aquifer permitting, and preserving local denial authority. Oklahoma's HB 2992 (signed May 11) imposes similar 75 MW+ cost-allocation rules, and Washington enacted SB 5982 tying large data centers to utility clean-energy deadlines. Maine's failed veto override on April 29 ended what would have been the first statewide moratorium in US history, and Minnesota's two moratorium bills (HF 4888, SF 4298) died when the Legislature adjourned May 18 without a hearing. On May 28 Vermont Governor Phil Scott vetoed H.727 (Sustainable Data Center Deployment Act) despite tripartisan supermajorities in both chambers; the House override fell six votes short. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill on May 27 unveiled the state's first comprehensive data center plan, requiring data centers to pay for their own electricity, report power and water use, and negotiate community benefit agreements; environmental and community groups responded by calling for a stronger three-year moratorium on 20 MW+ facilities. Virginia, the world's largest data center market, remained deadlocked. Governor Spanberger's May 22 bill-action deadline passed without a budget as House and Senate Democrats continued to spar over the roughly $1.6 billion data center sales tax exemption; Senate Finance Chair Lucas projected a budget by June 30 and Spanberger said she would not break a signed contract but signaled openness to not extending the exemption. Ohio's proposed constitutional amendment to ban data centers over 25 MW lagged far behind on signatures — organizers reported roughly 25,000 of the 413,488 required by the July 1 deadline. Local government remained the most active front, and the pace of new pauses quickened through late May and into June. City and county moratoriums took effect in Minneapolis (a six-month pause on facilities over 350,000 sq ft, May 21), Denver (a one-year pause, May 18), Baltimore City (a one-year pause sent to Mayor Scott, May 11), Dubuque County, Iowa, Bloomington and Normal, Illinois, Iron County, Utah, and an 18-month moratorium in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. Reno became the first Nevada local government to pause new data centers (May 14, with a final extension vote scheduled for June 1), and Smithfield, Rhode Island banned them outright. Seattle's emergency one-year moratorium on 10 MW+ facilities cleared committee briefings May 20 with committee votes set for June 3 and a possible final council vote around June 9 — Mayor Wilson backed parallel administrative steps. Michigan added Meridian Township and Macomb County's Washington Township to its tally of more than 20 local moratoriums; the Indianapolis City-County Council unanimously passed a non-binding pause-resolution sending the question to the Metropolitan Development Commission on June 3. Not every effort succeeded: the Cheyenne, Wyoming council rejected a moratorium 8-1, a Pulaski County, Arkansas measure fell one vote short on a recount and is expected to return in June, and a developer sued to overturn Hill County, Texas's new pause. Construction continued to outpace policy. Anthropic agreed on May 6 to use the full compute of xAI's Colossus 1 in Memphis (~220,000 GPUs, ~300 MW, paying SpaceX roughly $1.25 billion per month through May 2029), even as the NAACP sought an emergency injunction over the unpermitted gas turbines powering the adjacent Colossus 2 — the Department of Justice has a June 15 decision deadline on intervention. Meta's $27 billion Hyperion campus in Louisiana reached roughly 4,000 construction workers (heading toward 5,000 by June) and won about $3.3 billion in state tax breaks in mid-May. OpenAI's Stargate program expanded again: SoftBank's SB Energy was named on May 9 to build and operate a 1.2 GW Milam County, Texas site (filings indicate the first 548,950 sq ft building delivered by October), alongside ongoing builds in Abilene and Shackelford County. New mega-campuses advanced elsewhere, including the up-to-1.8 GW Joliet Technology Center near Chicago and Aligned's 540 MW Project Caprock near Abernathy, Texas. The overall trajectory points toward incremental ratepayer regulation, locally driven pauses, and mounting environmental and utility-cost litigation rather than statewide bans — while frontier AI construction accelerates.