Ohio’s local governments cannot fast-track new data centers without giving specific reasons, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled last week.

The decision put an Ashville referendum, which would strike down the village council’s approval of a local data center project, back on track to make Ashville’s ballot. It also makes municipalities that pass future emergency resolutions — which waive a 30-day grace period for standard resolutions — explain why they need to take effect immediately.

Brian Meyers, a plaintiff supporting the referendum and a bus technician for over 20 years, said the court’s decision felt like a statement against those who have tried to block their efforts, even if the referendum fails in November.

“If it goes on the ballot, and folks vote for [the data center project], then so be it,” he said. “That’s the will of the people, and that’s how it’s supposed to play out.”

The case started in April, when the Ashville Village Council approved a term summary for Virginia-based developer EdgeConneX to build two data center buildings and an 800-megawatt natural gas plant.

Ashville allowed EdgeConneX to start plans immediately by declaring an emergency, stating it was necessary for “the public peace, health, and safety” and adding that the council “needs to accept these terms as soon as possible so that this project is not unnecessarily delayed.”

Meyers said he learned about the new data center from an announcement on the back of his water bill. Alongside other Ashville residents, he helped gather enough signatures to petition for a referendum overturning the emergency resolution.

State law bars referendums from overturning emergency resolutions, and Ashville’s fiscal auditor blocked the petition. The petition’s supporters appealed to the state’s highest court in July.

“This is blatantly not an emergency,” Meyers said, “and luckily, the Supreme Court felt the same way.”

In a near-unanimous decision, the court ruled that the village’s stated reasons were not enough to be a valid emergency. The first reason “merely parrots” state law on emergency resolutions, and the second reason could apply to almost any emergency measure, the court wrote.

“All emergency measures are presumably designated as such because commencement of the underlying matter should not be delayed,” the majority said. “But Resolution No. 06-2026 does not explain why waiting 30 days for the resolution to take effect … would unnecessarily delay the EdgeConneX project.”

The village resolution is still in effect, and EdgeConneX’s plans are in motion. The natural gas plant portion of the project sits in front of the Ohio Power Siting Board for approval.

Meanwhile, the Pickaway County Board of Elections will now decide whether to validate the petition. At the end of its opinion, the court cautioned that the board of elections could deny the petition if it finds that the resolution was an administrative action that cannot be struck down by referendum. The board of elections is consulting the county prosecutor’s office on the issue.

On deck: A large-scale data center ban in Trenton heads to the Ohio Supreme Court

Another group trying to get data centers on their local ballot is also appealing to the Ohio Supreme Court, this time out of Trenton.

Organizers for Woodsdale and Trenton Environmental Resistance gathered 336 valid signatures for a local ban on new data centers that use over 25 megawatts of power, largely in response to an 880,000 square foot data center project in the city proposed by California-based developer Prologis.

From Cleveland to Clearcreek Township, dozens of Ohio municipalities have passed temporary bans on new data centers. City councils in Pataskala, Sunbury, Hubbard, and Urbana have approved ballot initiatives for permanent bans similar to the one proposed in Trenton.

Plaintiff and Trenton resident Barry Blankenship said the ban is meant to address hyperscale data centers, which are increasingly being used to train and power artificial intelligence models. He referenced low water pressure near data centers in Georgia and extreme pollution from a massive xAI data center in Tennessee as test cases against them.

“That’s not what we need in our communities at all,” he said.

Trenton City Council rejected their petition at an Aug. 4 meeting and passed an ordinance that set 10% of the city’s registered voters, or 820 people, as the required threshold for petition signatures.

The resistance group organizers filed a lawsuit against the city in the Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday. They argue that the city’s ordinance is overruled by a 1996 Ohio Supreme Court case that set 10% of voters in the last general municipal election, or 128 people in Trenton’s case, as the bar to clear.

Blankenship said the fight against his city council has left him with little faith in his local government.

“We knew we were in an uphill battle with them, but you still have to at the end of the day stand for something,” he added. “You’ve got to try to protect your community, one way or the other.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.