Data center developers head to court and more news from the states

Good evening. We start in New Jersey, where frustrated data center developers are turning to the courts to force reluctant communities to allow construction. In West Virginia, disabled residents struggle to find adequate shelter. And in Utah, federal officials abandon a plan for a new immigrant detention system.

In Alabama, students at a historically Black university question their administration’s new dress code, and in Idaho, a student lawyer is behind a new law that passed the legislature unanimously.

In national news, a Trump administration nominee may struggle to get Senate confirmation and local governments are turning to AI to speed up processing of building permits.

As residents across New Jersey protest plans for new data centers, developers are increasingly going to court to challenge municipal ordinances banning the facilities, New Jersey Monitor reports.

Montgomery, Andover and Monroe have each been sued in recent weeks by developers seeking to overturn municipal prohibitions on data centers. The suits argue that local officials acted arbitrarily and without proper planning in mind when enacting the bans.

“The action of the Township Committee was clearly based upon public hysteria and political attention rather than sound land use planning,” says the lawsuit targeting Montgomery’s ordinance.

Nearly three dozen New Jersey municipalities have passed bans or restrictions on data centers, as residents statewide have voiced concern that when data centers come to town, they bring noise, increased water use and rising electricity demands.

Ben Dziobek, executive director of the Climate Revolution Action Network, said he isn’t surprised that developers are turning to the courts in their bids to construct data centers. Dziobek said it’s a trend happening nationwide.

“Throughout the process of building a data center, these companies have just been so antidemocratic from the start,” he said. “To try to subvert the will of residents who demanded their elected officials pass these ordinances to ban data centers in the municipality is no surprise to me at all.”

In Nevada, meanwhile, the Nye County Board of Commissioners voted this week to extend a temporary moratorium and completely ban data centers in one of the most over-appropriated water basins in the arid state, Nevada Current reports.

It is the first municipality in Nevada to outright ban data centers. 

The ban is a blow to Gigawatt Development Partners LLC’s controversial Manse Technology Campus, a proposed 900-acre data center facility in the Pahrump Valley. 

“I am not willing to sacrifice your or my welfare in regards to a data center here in Pahrump Basin 162,” said Nye County Commissioner Bruce Jabbour to a room of about 100 residents, who mostly spoke in support of a ban.

More data center coverage: Utah lawmakers get a primer on data centers after a summer of protests and political fallout

Sarah and Ricky Mathes waited out July’s deadly storms in the only home they know — a 30-foot camper off of a gravel road in the rural community of Rock Cave in Upshur County, West Virginia, West Virginia Watch reports. 

The trailer has been deteriorating since they bought it used in 2022 to put a roof over their heads. They’ve covered the top in a blue tarp, a futile attempt to keep out water. The windows and doors don’t seal anymore. 

“Every time it rains, (Ricky) has to clean the carpet, run fans across the carpet,” Sarah Mathes said. “Our mattress has been soaked countless times, the pillows. Because it’s all starting to come in the seams of the cabinet.”

Sarah has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair. She needs handicapped-accessible housing, which is in short supply in her community, she said. 

“We have nowhere to go,” she said. “There is no emergency housing or housing for a disabled person.”

The camper was only meant to be a temporary housing solution for the couple — a step up from couch surfing and sleeping in cars. But they’ve been on waiting lists for subsidized housing since 2020. 

Heather Schnieder, the co-founder and coordinator of Appalachian Mutual Aid Collective, an Upshur County nonprofit organization that works with those struggling with housing, said the Mathes’ story is not unique. 

“When someone has disabilities in the community and is also low income, it’s very hard, as you can see, nearly impossible to get into one of the handicap-accessible units in the neighborhoods that are also supposed to be income accessible for people who don’t have a lot of money,” she said. 

Department of Homeland Security officials told Salt Lake City leaders this week that they “no longer intend to convert” a Utah warehouse, purchased earlier this year for $145.4 million, into a massive detention center, Utah News Dispatch reports. 

That’s according to new court documents, in which attorneys for all parties involved asked a judge to pause the lawsuit Salt Lake city and county filed in June against DHS seeking to block the detention center. 

The Salt Lake City warehouse, one of ICE’s most expensive purchases as part of a planned $45 billion expansion of immigration detention centers across the country, was purchased just days after former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was fired.

In the months after, uncertainty swirled around what would come of the Salt Lake warehouse as DHS officials said they were “reviewing agency policies and proposals” as it transitioned under newly sworn-in Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s leadership.

More immigration coverage:

Nebraska: The state’s two major political parties have asked the state Supreme Court to overrule a judge’s decision allowing two new state political parties to form. 

New Jersey: Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed legislation that criminalizes interference with reproductive and transgender healthcare while barring officials from aiding out-of-state investigations.

Idaho: Republican Attorney General Raúl Labrador is appealing a recent federal court ruling allowing abortions to protect the mother’s health or prevent her death from self-harm.

Alaska: A federal judge has overturned the land exchange intended to enable the state to build a controversial road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.

Maryland: After receiving a threat from the federal government about violating parental rights, the Anne Arundel County public school district amended its gender policy to grant parents more access.

Indiana: A federal appeals court upheld a ruling that permanently bars the state from penalizing Planned Parenthood for pointing pregnant minors to states in which abortion is legal.

Missouri: The state received nearly 900 applications for its final round of marijuana microbusiness licenses that are competing for 77 available licenses.

Kansas: The state Supreme Court reversed the convictions of a man who was convicted because he failed to pay a mandatory $20 fee after filling out a required form.

Georgia: Patient advocates reacted with alarm at the suggestion by the administration of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp that it could end his signature Medicaid program covering 18,500 people.

Arkansas: The state Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit that sought to reverse the secretary of state’s decision to disqualify a direct democracy ballot measure from the ballot. 

Louisiana: More child deaths possibly linked to abuse and neglect have been investigated so far this year than in all of 2025, and the number of proven fatal incidents is on pace to surpass last year’s count.

South Dakota: State prisons struggle to prepare inmates for release, and the support systems meant to help them on the outside often fall short, according to a report from a national nonprofit.

Serenity Mitchell, a junior studying biology, is among students at Alabama’s Tuskegee University questioning the institution’s newly announced dress code. (Photo by Estela Muñoz for Alabama Reflector)

The first day of class at the historically Black university saw many students in a range of outfits, from full suits to streetwear. Others dressed in T-shirts and sweatpants. But few if any seemed to be in violation of a new dress code imposed by university officials over the summer.

“Students are prohibited from wearing revealing clothing in class, to the cafeteria or in official settings like Convocation,” Tuskegee University President Mark A. Brown wrote in a letter to students over the summer.  “They are also not able to wear bedroom shoes, bonnets, or (do rag) to class or the cafeteria,” the statement said.

It’s unclear how the policy will be enforced. The statement from Brown said “faculty will be empowered to respond to students who are inappropriately dressed based on these guidelines.”

Some students were less than impressed.

“I think that releasing it in the way that they did made it look like students were kind of walking around here looking any type of way, and that’s just not true,” Mitchell said. “We as a student population represent ourselves well, so I think publishing the dress code like they did just makes us look bad.”

Read more from Alabama Reflector.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration will face challenges securing Senate confirmation after the committee chairman in charge of that process expressed doubts, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports. 

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy wrote in a social media post on Wednesday that while he respects Dr. Heidi Overton’s “experience as a physician,” he isn’t convinced she’s the right person to lead the FDA, highlighting her role in a Health and Human Services Department executive order that would weaken vaccine requirements. 

That, however, hasn’t deterred White House officials from pressing for Overton, arguing that she has the experience needed and that her policy goals align with the president's. 

“As Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, Dr. Heidi Overton has spent the last year and a half coordinating an interagency policymaking process with senior officials across HHS, FDA, CDC, USDA, and other agencies to deliver on President Trump’s MAHA agenda,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement shared with States Newsroom on Thursday.

Cities are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to address one of the most persistent sources of housing permitting delays: incomplete applications. And two new streams of federal money aim to help them, Stateline reports.

AI can handle time-intensive tasks such as scanning applications and flagging errors. The aim, some city officials say, is to eliminate repeated rounds of corrections that can add weeks or months to the process — but to leave final decisions in the hands of human reviewers.

The sweeping new federal housing law enacted last month creates an Innovation Fund with $200 million annually for local efforts to speed up permitting. And the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is offering up to $3 million in grants for local governments to deploy automated building code permitting systems.

More from Stateline: Despite record low in veteran homelessness, half the states saw increases

When Desalyn Swank applied to law school at University of Idaho, she said she made it clear she wanted to reform the state’s laws.

Before her first year at law school ended, she already had, Idaho Capital Sun reports. 

This year, the Idaho Legislature passed, and the governor signed, a bill she wrote to strengthen the state’s laws to criminalize the possession and sale of human remains. 

Inspired by her faith and her upbringing as the daughter of a mortician, she worked with coroners, law enforcement and others to craft a bill that didn’t receive a single no vote from any of Idaho’s 105 state lawmakers — all in the final few weeks of this year’s legislative session, when lawmakers often discourage new bills. 

The law, which took effect July 1, makes it a felony to sell, own, buy or lease “any artifacts or any human remains taken from a cairn, grave, or burial site,” or to “sell or advertise the sale of any material advertised as real human remains.” 

The law carves out several exceptions, including actions to perform government duties, such as work done by law enforcement or coroners, or by licensed medical practices, mortuaries, cemeteries or medical research facilities. 

But she doesn’t take all the credit.

“I don’t think that I really carved the path forward,” Swank said in an interview. “I think that it carved the path for itself because … the human remains retail market is so heinous, and it’s so against what we stand for as a nation and as humanity and what we hold as our values.”