A grassroots movement that began in a single Burlington County town has spread across nearly three dozen New Jersey municipalities in under a year, and the fight is now shifting from council chambers into state courtrooms.
Howell Just Became the 33rd New Jersey Town to Ban Data Centers. The Lawsuits Are Already Starting.
Howell Township’s all Republican council voted unanimously on August 18th to formally ban data centers within its borders, making the Monmouth County town the 33rd New Jersey municipality to adopt such a prohibition. The vote extends a genuinely rapid grassroots movement that began with a single Burlington County town in February and has since spread across nearly every corner of the state, crossing party lines and geography alike in ways few local zoning fights typically manage.
Howell’s Own Path to a Ban
Howell’s ordinance formally reconfirms data centers as a prohibited land use under the township’s zoning rules, following a moratorium the township’s board of trustees had already approved unanimously back in December to pause any data center proposals while officials worked toward a permanent solution. Howell Mayor John Leggio, a Republican, worked directly with residents and council members to see the ban through, and local advocates credited that collaboration directly for the outcome.
Joe Bizonos, a Howell resident and member of the local group Howell Connections, framed the decision as a matter of getting ahead of a problem rather than reacting to one. “Being proactive is always better than being reactive,” Bizonos said. “Howell is a farm town with so many natural resources, so preemptively prohibiting data centers was the right thing to do.”
A Ban That Now Spans the Entire State
The 33 municipalities that have adopted data center bans reach into nearly every region of New Jersey, undercutting any easy narrative that this is a single county’s concern or a single party’s cause.
Monmouth County
Howell, Neptune Township, Asbury Park, and Red Bank
South Jersey
Logan Township, Millville, Monroe Township, Pemberton Township, and Waterford
North & Central Jersey
Holmdel, Sayreville, Warren Township, Phillipsburg, and Andover Township
Pemberton Township became the first New Jersey municipality to adopt a formal ban back in February, and the movement has accelerated considerably since. Ben Dziobek, whose organization has tracked the bans as they’ve spread, has described the pattern as building on genuine, sustained local pressure, with hundreds of residents showing up to council meetings across the state on a near daily basis to demand action.
Where the Legal Fight Actually Stands
As the number of bans has climbed, the conflict has begun spilling directly into New Jersey’s court system. Andover Township, a Sussex County community, is currently facing a lawsuit from Pennsylvania based National Land Developers after the township reversed course, moving from an ordinance that would have permitted a data center to an outright, townshipwide ban within the span of just five days following intense public backlash. The developer’s complaint, filed in Sussex County Superior Court, argues the reversal was arbitrary and lacked proper planning justification, seeking to overturn the ban and clear the way for a proposed facility on a roughly 97 acre former airport site.
Andover is not alone in facing legal exposure. Monroe Township is separately fighting a 300 million dollar federal lawsuit from a Princeton based developer over a planned one million square foot data center the township’s ban blocked, a dispute township officials reportedly anticipated well before the ban was even finalized. Matthew Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University, has told reporters that New Jersey municipalities enacting these bans are on genuinely strong legal footing, pointing to the state’s Municipal Land Use Law, which grants towns broad, front loaded authority over local zoning decisions. Andover Mayor Tom Walsh has expressed similar confidence publicly, saying the township is prepared to explain exactly what steps it took and why once the case proceeds.
The State Government Is Moving Too
The local wave of bans has occurred alongside, and likely helped drive, real movement at the state level. Governor Mikie Sherrill signed legislation requiring large data center facilities to fund their own energy needs and cover related grid infrastructure upgrades themselves, an effort specifically aimed at preventing tech companies from shifting those costs onto residential ratepayers. That law fits within a broader four pillar approach Sherrill’s administration has outlined for regulating data centers statewide, covering cost shifting away from ratepayers, expanded transparency through biannual reporting requirements, stronger statewide standards for community benefits agreements, and incentives tying data center development to local trade jobs.
Public opinion research suggests that state level action still has not fully quieted local frustration. An April poll from the Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll found that 65 percent of New Jersey residents supported a statewide pause on new data center construction until additional power generation capacity comes online to meet the facilities’ energy demands. A coalition of 60 organizations, led by the Pinelands Alliance and including environmental groups, labor unions, and civil rights organizations, delivered that same message directly to Sherrill in a formal letter, backed by a petition that had gathered more than 7,500 signatures calling for a temporary construction halt. With Andover’s and Monroe’s lawsuits now working through the courts and Howell marking the 33rd town to formalize a ban, New Jersey’s data center fight appears to be entering a genuinely new phase, one where the outcome will likely be decided as much by judges interpreting the state’s zoning law as by the town councils that keep adding their names to the list.
