Washington Built Four Roads Around the Towns — Then Narrowed the Courtroom

In Yellowstone County, Montana, a citizens' group gathered enough signatures to put data centers to a vote — a two-thirds threshold before any new one could be built. The county sued to keep the initiative off the ballot, and Commissioner Mark Morse was plain about where the idea came from.

We’re basically asking, in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, is this an initiative that Yellowstone County can pursue? — Mark Morse

The ruling he meant was the Supreme Court's June 2025 decision narrowing the National Environmental Policy Act, the law that for half a century made federal agencies study a project's environmental effects before building. The Court cut it back 8-0 ^[1]. A county commissioner was now citing that ruling to keep his own voters from deciding anything at all. That is the past year in miniature: Washington built new roads around local consent, and then it narrowed the courtroom where the objections would land. The roads were paved one at a time, by different hands, each with its own stated reason. The Pentagon opened the first. A January memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called for an "AI-first warfighting force," and by May the department was soliciting private proposals to put data centers on military bases — Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, Dugway Proving Ground — where no zoning board has jurisdiction ^[2]. The Environmental Protection Agency opened the second. Its air chief, Aaron Szabo, proposed letting data centers pour concrete and lay pipe before they held air permits, and he said why.

For too long the Clean Air Act has been used as an excuse to slow walk projects beneficial to our communities. — Aaron Szabo

By July the agency had gone further, exempting power plants that serve only a data center — "islanded" plants, cut off from the grid — from the Acid Rain Program's pollution rules ^[3]. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission opened the third, ordering six regional grid operators to rewrite their rules so large power users can connect faster, at Energy Secretary Chris Wright's request ^[4]. Developers opened the fourth themselves: in Hill County, Texas, a company sued for $100 million over a moratorium, and the county rescinded it rather than fight ^[5]. While those roads were being paved, the courtroom was being remodeled. The Supreme Court's NEPA ruling was the load-bearing change. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the law had become "a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents" ^[1]. The EPA's arc shows the same direction from inside the executive branch: in January the agency was telling data center operators their gas turbines had to comply with the Clean Air Act, and by July it was exempting islanded power plants from rules it had just been enforcing ^[6][3]. And in Yellowstone County, the ruling was being put to a use the Court never described — a commissioner citing it to block a vote. The objections didn't disappear; they changed venue. The same complaints about air, water, and community impact that once filled zoning-board hearings are now being filed in federal court. The NAACP and Earthjustice put xAI on notice they would sue under the Clean Air Act over 27 unpermitted gas turbines in Mississippi ^[7]. Boulder City is appealing a federal land bureau's approval of a data center on public land ^[8]. A congressman is demanding environmental review of the Army's new data center deals ^[9]. And this spring a federal judge showed the route can work, blocking the Department of Homeland Security from building a detention center in Maryland after finding "inconsistencies in the federal government's environmental reports" ^[10]. The convergent effect may already be doing what each actor separately set out to do. A judge cleared Amazon's Shreveport data center over residents' water objections ^[11]. Hill County folded rather than litigate. No NEPA challenge to a military-base data center has even been filed yet. But the tools for the other side were narrowed at the same moment the arguments arrived. The first NEPA challenge to a military-base data center hasn't been filed yet. When it is, it will test whether the courtroom was emptied before the objections arrived — or whether the objections found a judge still willing to listen.