Lawmakers in at the very least 5 different states—Georgia, Maryland, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Virginia—have additionally launched payments this yr that may impose numerous types of non permanent pauses on information heart growth. Whereas Georgia, Vermont, and Virginia’s efforts are being led by Democrats, Oklahoma and Maryland’s payments had been largely sponsored by Republicans. These payments mirror a number of moratoriums which have already handed domestically: On the finish of December, at the very least 14 states had cities or counties which have paused information heart allowing and development, Tech Coverage Press reported.
There are some indicators that the info heart trade is starting to answer the backlash. Final month, Microsoft, with a lift from the White Home, rolled out a set of commitments to be a “good neighbor” in communities the place it builds information facilities. In response to questions on how the trade is responding to the slew of state-level laws, Dan Diorio, the vice chairman of state coverage on the Information Middle Coalition, an trade group, tells WIRED in an announcement that it “acknowledges the significance of continued efforts to higher educate and inform the general public in regards to the trade, by group engagement and stakeholder schooling, which incorporates factual details about the trade’s accountable utilization of water and our dedication to paying for the power we use.”
A number of the states with moratorium payments have comparatively few information facilities: Vermont has simply two, in line with Data Center Map. However Georgia and Virginia are two of the nationwide hubs for information heart growth and have discovered themselves on the heart of a lot of the resistance, in each public response to information facilities and legislative pushback. Greater than 60 data-center-related payments have already been proposed within the Virginia legislature this yr, in line with Information Middle Dynamics, an trade information web site.
Josh Thomas is a state delegate in Virginia who has been on the forefront of main the legislative cost to place limits on the enlargement of information facilities. Throughout his first legislative session, in 2024, the caucus of self-identified information heart “reformers” in each the Home and Senate was simply three politicians. That quantity grew to eight in 2025, “and now, it’s 12 or 13,” he says, with many extra politicians prepared to vote on reform payments. His fellow lawmakers, he says, now “perceive that we have to negotiate the place these items go.”
Final yr, a proposal launched by Thomas that may have required information facilities to carry out extra in-depth environmental-, noise-, and community-impact web site assessments handed the legislature, but it surely was vetoed by then governor Glenn Youngkin. Newly elected governor Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who talked about making information facilities “pay their very own manner” on the marketing campaign path, appears more likely to rethink this yr’s model of the invoice, which has already passed the Home.
“I’m way more optimistic that [Spanberger] will signal,” Thomas says.
Thomas, who was not concerned in shaping the moratorium within the Virginia Home, thinks {that a} moratorium on information facilities is more likely to go in states the place the trade has much less of a foothold than in Virginia. Nonetheless, he says, “it’s not a nasty concept.”
