- Moratoriums are more successful when pursued before developers attain permits or zoning approvals
- Moratoriums are clustered, and adopt different strategies in different states
- Within state clusters, moratoriums can spread among counties and townships with similar profiles
- In pro-business states with weak local governance, moratoriums are a last-resort choice
In theory, moratoriums are not limited to the county level. Yet in practice, no state has yet enacted a state-wide moratorium on data center development. Thus far, moratoriums have been discussed and passed in 76 counties and townships, and discussed but not passed in 33 more across the U.S.
Moratoriums cluster, and clusters differ.
What do these counties have in common? It depends on the state. Moratorium strategies are clustered: once one county begins discussing the possibility of a moratorium, its neighbors take note, leading to a visible clustering of the practice. Each cluster has a different profile. Once established, moratoriums spread in recognizable patterns.
In Indiana, the spread appears contiguous among agricultural counties in the north-central belt. In Ohio and Michigan, it is suburbs surrounding major cities that are moratorium active: near Toledo, Akron, Columbus, and Detroit. In Georgia, moratoriums are concentrated in the Atlanta metro area, in urban and exurban counties.
Let's deep dive into the Indiana cluster, where five counties have passed moratoriums on data center development. These five counties are all agricultural communities with lower budgetary revenues, on average, than other Indiana counties which have not passed moratoriums. All five counties passed moratoriums preemptively, before fielding any proposals from data center developers. In Georgia, Michigan, and Ohio, by contrast, moratorium activity is concentrated in urban counties and townships that raised the issue after data center developers approached them.
The Indiana road to moratoriums was uncoached, spontaneous, and largely limited to agricultural counties which are relatively contiguous. Michigan and Georgia, for example, have long-time national NGOs mobilizing grassroots coalitions. Unlike Indiana's cluster — where the Marshall County attorney wrote the moratorium language himself, with no outside counsel — these clusters appear more coordinated. Moratoriums against data centers, then, are not isolated instances. Like living organisms, they behave differently in different contexts. They spread along different channels. We at LocalQ Labs are working to predict their spread, their subtypes, their risk factors.
Early mobilization matters.
Our research shows that timing matters. 52% of counties which attempted to pass a moratorium before data center developers received approval were successful. Only 33% of counties which began mobilizing after data center developers already inked deals were successful.
This is because once a developer obtains a permit or rezoning approval, they acquire "vested rights" under U.S. property law. Later ordinances or moratoriums can be ruled procedurally improper or are blocked outright by the county commission before reaching a vote. Not only can a moratorium passed after vesting fail to retroactively block an approved project — it can be overturned altogether for violating developers' vested rights.
Case study — Lansing Town, NY: In September 2025, residents began discussing a moratorium while the town council drafted stricter zoning requirements around renewable energy use, noise abatement, and water restrictions. But the process took too long. In December, just two weeks before the moratorium vote, the Zoning Board of Appeals — a non-legislative body — approved TeraWulf's appeal to classify its project as a general processing facility, an allowable use under existing code. Because that approval came before the moratorium vote, the town board was forced to withdraw the entire motion.
The power of vested rights arguments hands considerable leverage to developers. They have been invoked in three major lawsuits: by Amazon after a new King George County, VA board attempted to rescind an already-approved land rezoning; by Centra Logistics after the Henrico Planning Commission tried to block its data center project; and by Starwood Digital after the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control attempted to deny permits to its Project Washington.
Indiana: the power of early preemption.
In 2024, Marshall County, Indiana began a preemptive conversation about a possible moratorium with no ongoing data center proposals — commissioners had simply observed construction in nearby counties. With no direct duress from developers, they drafted a very simple document, written solely by their county attorney.
When the moratorium was not challenged under state preemption doctrine, neighboring Fulton County took note and passed a similar moratorium, kicking off a chain reaction. None of the counties in Indiana with moratoriums had any data centers under construction or even permitted when they acted. In no other state are moratoriums passed purely preemptively. The counties most hesitant to act were those with stronger economic development pressure and less agricultural identity — these moved to moratorium later in the sequence, once they perceived lower risks associated with acting.
Moratoriums still occur in pro-business states with weak county governance.
In some states, moratorium pushes are a last-resort choice, pursued when other means — such as lawsuits — fail. In Ohio, a very successful push to enact moratoriums on data center development is directly linked to the difficulty of gaining leverage via lawsuits. The state combines weak township zoning authority and an absence of a unified rural land-use planning framework — in some ways comparable to Texas counties — with an aggressive data center attraction policy. Lacking the legal tools to shape local development, communities have embraced moratoriums and bans over the more usual practice of rezoning hearings.
None of the dominant modes of legal action — filing challenges to approved rezoning, filing administrative permit appeals, or launching nuisance lawsuits — have gained traction in Ohio. Instead, the legal battleground has shifted to the legislative and ballot-initiative arena: approximately 18 municipalities enacted moratoriums or bans by early 2026, and the Ohio Attorney General's Office certified a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit large data centers exceeding 25 MW in March 2026. Ohio, a rustbelt state with high unemployment and a legacy of distrust of tech corporations, seems to have created a perfect storm where citizens embrace moratoriums as their weapon of choice.
What does this mean for you? Watch local clusters, and understand their internal dynamics. Be aware that pro-business states with weak county authorities — which otherwise seem hospitable to data center development — may harbor a hidden threat: moratoriums are aggressively pursued in those states as a last-resort option precisely because other avenues are closed off.