EPIC Joins Group Urging New Jersey Court to Reject Data Center Developer’s First Amendment Claim

On Tuesday, EPIC joined Tech Justice Law (TJL), along with nine other public interest groups and law professors in an amicus brief to the New Jersey district court asserting that Monroe Township’s Ordinance banning data centers is constitutional. The defendant, Hexa Builders (Hexa), claims the ban violates their First Amendment rights.  

TJL filed the brief in Hexa Builders, LLC and 3043 Williamstown Urban Renewal, LLC v. Mayor and Township Council of the Township of Monroe and Planning Board of the Township of Monroe on behalf of The Pinelands Alliance, The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Legal Advocates for Safe Science & Technology, Inc., The Open Markets Institute, The Center for Media & Digital Governance, EPIC, and Professors Ellen Goodman, Olivier Sylvain, Zephyr Teachout, Brett Frischmann, and Laura Bingham.  

Hexa based their argument on the overreaching idea that data centers, by definition, are mediums of expression because they facilitate consumer-facing products and applications, such as social media. With this logic, the company argues that Monroe Township’s ordinance would unlawfully burden the production and transmission of constitutionally protected speech.  

On the contrary, the group insists that data center bans do not burden any speech. Local governments must have the ability to protect their residents’ health, safety, and welfare through regulation, especially when it comes to the real-world risks posed by data centers. These facilities require substantial amounts of electricity and water, occupy significant parcels of land, place additional demands on local infrastructure, and often raise concerns about the noise, public health, hazardous emissions, and other environmental impacts on poor communities. Preventing data centers from being built in a city does not burden protected speech because data centers are not themselves speech, and any speech activities that they promote are not infringed upon by regulating where the data centers may be placed. 

EPIC has sounded the alarm about the harms of data centers and continues to oppose Big Tech’s weaponization of the First Amendment to subvert its accountability to the public.