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An increasing number of states are pursuing legislation aimed at preventing local municipalities from regulating data centers and artificial intelligence (AI), legal advocates warn, all but ensuring their construction. This “preemption legislation” truncates efforts led by residents to counter the rapid expansion of facilities that have been widely criticized for everything from noise pollution to the secretive process by which many contracts for development are approved.

In the past two years, at least nine states have considered 12 different bills aimed at curbing local control of data centers and artificial intelligence, according to the Local Solutions Support Center, a national network of organizations that tracks the overuse of preemption.

“The companies that are behind AI are going to state legislatures proactively and saying, ‘We want to make sure that there are no governments that are regulating AI … we want you to enact this,’” said Leslie Zellers, a lawyer with the Local Solutions Support Center. “It’s a coordinated effort by special interests to try to stop any local regulation of AI.”

Members of Local Solutions Support Center say that the bills introduced in New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia, which seek to codify a “right to compute,” are facsimiles of the same model legislation written by the conservative lobbying group American Legislative Exchange Council. Going off that model allows the legislation to appear in many state houses seemingly all at once, and it’s dangerous, Zellers said, because once preemption is made law, it’s nearly impossible to undo.

The U.S. is constructing data centers faster than anywhere else in the world and is home to the largest number of hyperscale data centers. A single hyperscale facility can consume as much energy as 2 million U.S. households. While data centers have been used since the 1940s to store computer processing information off-site, the AI boom is driving the construction of new........

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