Voters in 10 states approved ballot measures against AI data center development on Election Day, and governors who support moratoria now lead states covering 41% of the country's planned data center projects, according to Earthjustice. The message was blunt. The follow-through is the hard part.

Data centers were "dealt a resounding blow in the midterm elections," Mandy DeRoche, director of emerging issues at Earthjustice, said at a press event on Wednesday. The ballot measures residents approved did several distinct things: pausing development, requiring public approval for projects, restricting data center electricity use, and tying financial assurances to tax incentives. Congressional and state-level candidates who promised action on the issue also won in large numbers.

Now the newly elected legislators hold the levers. Most permitting decisions sit at the state and local level, which means the real constraint on the industry won't come from Washington alone.

How did developers build so fast?

The industry has a track record of limiting public information and skirting oversight. Developers have demanded that government officials sign non-disclosure agreements, denying residents both information and a chance to weigh in.

They've also used a tactic called "segmentation" — splitting one project into smaller permits, sometimes filed under multiple corporations. That speeds approval, hides a project's true scope, and lets developers sidestep more rigorous environmental reviews. In Texas, data centers have been accused of skirting environmental permits outright.

Activists see momentum anyway. "I've never been part of a movement like this before," said Sarah Friedman, co-founder of the Better Data Center Project, an advocacy group working with communities facing development. The pushback has "created new alliances, new support, and I think new awareness of big tech and the role it plays," she said.

It's also bipartisan. "Harmful data center development has been reined in when a state regulator acts, and acts in its community's interest," DeRoche said. "And I'm optimistic that that will increasingly happen after last week, with new agency heads, with new governors."

What can state lawmakers actually do?

Quite a lot, according to Earthjustice. The menu of options:

• Ban NDAs and mandate that project information is public and accessible, with room for community engagement.
• Impose "new, near, and now" energy standards on projects building their own power. That means developers build new clean energy rather than claiming existing resources that would otherwise benefit the grid, per Callie Rabinovitz of Earthjustice's Clean Energy Program. Clean power must come online when the data center does — no fossil fuel "bridge" power — and match the facility's load 24/7.
• Require cumulative environmental reviews that consider pollution already in a region and stop base power being reviewed separately from backup generators.
• Repeal tax incentives that have cost municipalities hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Make developers pay for decommissioning and for grid infrastructure if off-grid centers later connect — "which we expect most of them will," Rabinovitz said.
• Write moratoria that bite. "Not all moratoria are created equal," DeRoche warned.

Texas is the cautionary tale. Outgoing Governor Greg Abbott issued a data center pause, yet regulators at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) still processed 35 permitting actions for data center projects afterward.

What changed in Texas?

Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned on a data center pause, can appoint at least two new TCEQ commissioners. Texas also elected a new Democratic commissioner to the Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas — someone who "was not the oil and gas industry's pick to win the seat," according to the watchdog group Commission Shift. A new District Attorney has spoken out against data centers and backed more local involvement in project decisions.

What can Congress do?

Plenty, and with Democrats controlling both chambers, the path is clearer. Federal options include:

• Guardrails on data center development on public lands
• Transparency requirements on energy use, water use, and overall emissions
• Enforceable ratepayer protections that don't incentivize more gas development
• Stronger oversight of agencies like the EPA to enforce laws already on the books
• Protection of local governments' rights to regulate their own permitting

Meg Slattery, staff scientist at Earthjustice, frames the stakes beyond permitting. "We are hoping that this creates an opportunity to refocus on addressing the climate crisis and building a just clean energy transition," she said, "rather than orienting the government towards accommodating a hyperscale data center buildout at any cost."