Tennessee state Rep. Justin J. Pearson, a congressional candidate and high-profile opponent of local data center sprawl, filed suit Thursday against his hometown’s City Council after the council threw him, his brother, his mother, and other locals out of a meeting earlier this month for protesting delays to a vote on a data center moratorium—and then banned them from future city council meetings.

Pearson will now be locked out of a particularly important meeting on October 20, when the council will finally hold that data center moratorium vote. He and his five co-plaintiffs, including a high school senior involved in the protest, argue that the two-month ban from city council violates their first amendment rights to free expression.

“Every person, whether you disagree with them or not, is entitled to speak their opinion and give their ideas in public forms,” Pearson wrote in a press release October 15. “There is no right that gives a City Council chairwoman or anyone else the ability to go beyond the bounds of Tennessee law and the United States Constitution to discriminate or retaliate against those who do not agree with their actions.”

Pearson, elected in 2023 to the Tennessee House of Representatives, became known nationally in 2023........

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