New York Is the Latest State to Consider a Data Center Pause

Lawmakers in at least five other states—Georgia, Maryland, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Virginia—have also introduced bills this year that would impose various forms of temporary pauses on data center development. While Georgia, Vermont, and Virginia’s efforts are being led by Democrats, Oklahoma and Maryland’s bills were largely sponsored by Republicans. These bills mirror several moratoriums that have already passed locally: At the end of December, at least 14 states had towns or counties that have paused data center permitting and construction, Tech Policy Press reported.

There are some signs that the data center industry is beginning to respond to the backlash. Last month, Microsoft, with a boost from the White House, rolled out a set of commitments to be a “good neighbor” in communities where it builds data centers. In response to questions on how the industry is responding to the slew of state-level legislation, Dan Diorio, the vice president of state policy at the Data Center Coalition, an industry group, tells WIRED in a statement that it “recognizes the importance of continued efforts to better educate and inform the public about the industry, through community engagement and stakeholder education, which includes factual information about the industry’s responsible usage of water and our commitment to paying for the energy we use.”

Some of the states with moratorium bills have relatively few data centers: Vermont has just two, according to Data Center Map. But Georgia and Virginia are two of the national hubs for data center development and have found themselves at the center of much of the resistance, in both public reaction to data centers and legislative pushback. More than 60 data-center-related bills have already been proposed in the Virginia legislature this year, according to Data Center Dynamics, an industry news site.

Josh Thomas is a state delegate in Virginia who has been at the forefront of leading the legislative charge to put limits on the expansion of data centers. During his first legislative session, in 2024, the caucus of self-identified data center “reformers” in both the House and Senate was just three politicians. That number grew to eight in 2025, “and now, it’s 12 or 13,” he says, with many more politicians willing to vote on reform bills. His fellow lawmakers, he says, now “understand that we need to negotiate where these things go.”

Last year, a proposal introduced by Thomas that would have required data centers to perform more in-depth environmental-, noise-, and community-impact site assessments passed the legislature, but it was vetoed by then governor Glenn Youngkin. Newly elected governor Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who talked about making data centers “pay their own way” on the campaign trail, seems much more likely to reconsider this year’s version of the bill, which has already passed the House.

“I’m much more optimistic that [Spanberger] will sign,” Thomas says.

Thomas, who was not involved in shaping the moratorium in the Virginia House, thinks that a moratorium on data centers is much more likely to pass in states where the industry has less of a foothold than in Virginia. Still, he says, “it’s not a bad idea.”