The single most dramatic shift in political opinion over the past six months has been the backlash against data centers.

I first noticed the change last autumn while browsing a post from the Facebook Group of my hometown in Central Illinois. A post about a new CyrusOne data center in Springfield had 145 comments, making it one of the more active discussions on the page. Even though the facility would operate on a closed-loop water system, commenters fixated on its water use. And despite the fact that CyrusOne would fund the necessary transmission upgrades and pay the full cost of service, many still feared the project would drive up local energy bills.

This dislike for data centers is starting to translate into political action. According to Data Center Watch, between May 2024 and March 2025, $64 billion in US data center projects were blocked or delayed. In Michigan, at least 19 communities have proposed or implemented data center bans. And to not be outdone, Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a data center ban.

State legislatures are moving in a similar direction. In just the past few months, lawmakers in Georgia, New York, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Maryland have introduced bills to pause or restrict data center construction. The bills differ in duration and scope, but they all aim to stop building until the costs can be properly studied. The table below maps the current landscape.    

The most aggressive of the bills is from New York State Senator Liz Krueger, who recently proposed S9144. The bill would disallow permits for siting, construction, or operation of data centers until the state completes a full regulatory process which cannot happen sooner than three years after enactment. Importantly, the bill doesn’t specify a date when the regulation has to be completed, so the ban could remain permanent.

This bill also requires the Department of Environmental Conservation to produce a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) on data centers within 18 months. A GEIS differs from a standard environmental review. Instead of analyzing the impacts of a single project at a specific site, it assesses impacts across an entire category of development statewide. Once a GEIS is complete, future projects that fall within its scope can be reviewed against its findings rather than starting from scratch, which can speed up individual approvals.

But the efficiency benefit cuts both ways. A GEIS gives the agency substantial authority to define what counts as an acceptable data center, what mitigation measures are required, and what conditions must be met before a project can proceed. If the Department of Environmental Conservation writes a restrictive GEIS, it could function as a de facto regulatory framework for data centers in New York, independent of any further legislative action.

What’s most striking about these bills is that they aren’t directed at the large data centers from Google, Meta, and Amazon. Big tech is mostly building massive data centers, known as hyperscale data centers. According to the common industry definition, hyperscalers use 5,000 servers or more and devote at least 10,000 square feet to the operation, drawing 100 MW or more. Instead, the bills have thresholds that range from 1 MW (Virginia) to 20 MW (New York) to 100 MW (Oklahoma). Virginia’s 1 MW threshold and Georgia’s lack of a MW definition would be especially onerous as it would capture colocation firms, regional telecom operators, university research centers, and government agencies, not just AI companies.

The backlash against data centers is real, bipartisan, and accelerating. But the moratoria are blunt instruments aimed at a poorly defined target. They capture far more than hyperscale AI facilities, they hand significant regulatory discretion to agencies without clear legislative direction, and they offer no mechanism for addressing the grid and water concerns that motivated them in the first place. Public frustration with data centers reflects genuine questions about who bears the costs of the AI build-out. Those are legitimate questions. Moratoria do not answer them.