The Data-Center Map Moved, and Almost Nobody Told the Industry

Here is a question worth sitting with: when you picture a county board turning down a data center, where are you? Most people in this industry picture Northern Virginia. Loudoun, Prince William, the long fights over the Digital Gateway.

That picture is three years out of date, and site-selection decisions are still being made from it.

Georgia, Michigan and the Carolinas hold the overwhelming share of the counties SitePath classifies as restrictive — a moratorium, a ban, or rules that were deliberately tightened. Virginia holds one, and it isn't even a moratorium: Loudoun County now requires a special exception for every new data center, which is a different thing from a closed door.

The fight didn't stay where the industry started. It followed the industry to where it's going.

Michigan is the largest restricted footprint in the country

As of April 28, 2026, 51 Michigan cities and townships had enacted data-center moratoriums covering roughly 1,500 square miles — about the size of Rhode Island, and some 2.5% of the state's land. The pauses run anywhere from 90 days to two years. Washtenaw County alone accounts for 14 communities, with more in Howell Township, Lowell Township near Grand Rapids, and Monitor Township outside Bay City. (Governing / GovTech)

Michigan is also where the hardest legal question in the country is sitting unanswered. State law bars local governments from "exclusionary" zoning — flatly prohibiting a category of land use. A temporary pause is defensible. A permanent ban may not be, and the test would turn on whether there's a "demonstrated need" for what's being excluded. Nobody has litigated what that means for a data center. (Governing / GovTech)

Every developer holding a Michigan site is, right now, making a bet on the answer. Most of them don't know they've placed one.

Georgia moved first, and moved together

Georgia's counties acted in a cluster in the autumn of 2025 — a wave of data-center ordinances passing across the state within weeks of each other. (Georgia Public Broadcasting)

Clayton County is the one to study, and not because it was the loudest. Its Board of Commissioners unanimously adopted Resolution 2025-193, halting acceptance of applications for special land use permits, rezonings, land disturbance permits, building permits, licenses and certificates of occupancy for new data centers and expansions of existing ones — with two data centers already approved in the county. (Clayton County)

Look closely at the mechanism, because it's the one that spread. Clayton didn't ban a use, which invites a lawsuit. It stopped accepting applications while it wrote the ordinance it wished it had written first. That's a county buying itself time, and it is very hard to sue.

The Carolinas are where 2026 accelerated

North Carolina gave us the year's cleanest example. On April 21, 2026, the Orange County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously, 6-0, for a one-year moratorium on large-scale data centers — explicitly covering AI data centers, cryptocurrency mining, and data processing. It followed a March 5 direction to study the question and a March 17 staff report on electricity demand, water use, land-use compatibility, and what all of it would do to residents' utility bills. (Orange County, NC; WUNC)

Six weeks from "let's look into this" to a unanimous vote. That is not a county that got worked up. That is a county that read the staff report.

Maryland went furthest

On July 28, 2026, the Montgomery County Council approved Expedited Bill 19-26, barring the permitting department from issuing data-center permits for 18 months — and amended it to reach applications filed before as well as after the effective date, including projects already approved but not yet issued a building permit. Alongside it, ZTA 26-01 defines hyperscale data centers and prohibits them outright for the duration. (Montgomery County)

Read that middle clause again. Most moratoria protect what's already in the pipeline. Montgomery County deliberately didn't. An approval without a building permit is not a vested right there. Maryland now has 13 counties with data-center moratoriums — more than half the state. (Good Jobs First)

What this means if you site projects for a living

Price the trajectory, not the status. Across the counties SitePath scores for data-center posture, 30 are tightening, 15 are stable, and 1 is loosening. Sentiment runs 50 counties opposed to 3 supportive. A permissive county in a state where the neighbours are moving as a bloc is not the same asset as a permissive county in a quiet state. Georgia and Michigan both show these decisions cluster — the unit of analysis is the region, not the parcel.

Watch the instrument, not the headline. Clayton's application freeze, Orange County's study window, Montgomery's permit bar: none of them say "we prohibit this use," and all of them achieve it for a defined period. That's a deliberate answer to the legal exposure a flat ban carries — the exposure Michigan's exclusionary-zoning question is about to test, and the one that cost Hill County, Texas its moratorium in the face of a $100 million lawsuit.

A grandfathered pipeline is not automatically safe. Montgomery County reached backward into approved-but-unpermitted projects. If that survives review, it will be copied, and the copying will be fast.

And stop using Virginia as the leading indicator. It's a mature market with one county in a restrictive posture. What happens to this industry next is being decided in Atlanta's exurbs, in Washtenaw County, and across the North Carolina Piedmont — by boards that have already read the staff report.

What this analysis does not tell you

SitePath's restrictive-county count is a floor, not a census. County-level records cannot cleanly capture township and municipal action — Michigan's 51 communities sit inside a handful of county records — and national trackers put the total local count anywhere between 70 and 200-plus depending on method. (Good Jobs First) Trackers also disagree on whether a lapsed moratorium, a resolution urging a pause, and an enacted zoning ban should count the same way. Where this piece cites a specific county action, it is linked to that jurisdiction's own record or to primary reporting. Where it cites a national total, treat the number as one method among several.