Loudoun County, the data center capital of the world, is considering a pause on new facility applications, reflecting the growing political pushback to the explosion of construction in the sector.  

But there are questions about the legality of such a move, including from one of the county's elected officials.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors last month approved a motion directing county staff to present an item at its Sept. 15 meeting that would establish a pause along with a legal analysis from the county’s attorney. 

The proposal, which once may have been considered unthinkable in such a region of the country, comes amid growing public backlash over the digital infrastructure, causing cities and counties across the U.S. to institute freezes on development. 

If Loudoun’s measure comes to fruition, it could cause project delays for developers and stifle a growing revenue stream that makes up a significant part of the county’s funding.

Even a temporary pause could “send a message to industry that they are no longer welcome to expand and continue to invest in Loudoun County,” said Gregory Riegle, a partner at McGuireWoods who leads the law firm’s data center efforts.

There is, however, a big problem standing in the way of such a moratorium: Virginia is subject to a legal doctrine called Dillon’s Rule that says localities can only do what the state expressly allows, and it hasn’t allowed moratoriums. Loudoun County says in an FAQ on its website that the board of supervisors “does not have the legal authority to implement a moratorium on new data center applications.”

Still, over the past few months, at least three Virginia jurisdictions have instituted their own pauses, and so far seem to have circumvented that legal hurdle. Their success has encouraged Loudoun to pursue a similar path. 

“What I would like to explore is doing it in a way that the other jurisdictions did it, in that they paused while they worked on the zoning that's related to data centers,” Algonkian District Supervisor Juli Briskman, who proposed the motion, told Bisnow. 

Virginia localities including Chesapeake, Front Royal and Fluvanna County have approved halts on processing data center applications so they could work out their policies. 

But two of those jurisdictions are taking great pains to avoid calling these measures moratoriums. 

Fluvanna’s planning commission referred to its September 2025 action — which expired in January — as a “moratorium” in meeting minutes last fall.

But county attorney Dan Whitten told Bisnow in an email that the wording in the minutes was inaccurate and pointed to the definition of moratorium in Black’s Law Dictionary.

“There was not a moratorium on data centers; rather the Board of Supervisors directed staff to postpone consideration of applications,” Whitten said in the email.

Last month, the city of Chesapeake approved an eight-month pause on considering data center land use applications, according to a resolution that was taken offline after Bisnow noted the word “moratorium” appeared in the URL.

“I do not assign the web links, so I guess that came from IT,” Chesapeake city attorney Catherine Lindley said in a July 30 email. “I will inquire about it as that is misleading. As you see in the resolution, we do not use the word moratorium!”

To Pause Or Not To Pause

Loudoun County has been the center of digital infrastructure for nearly as long as the asset class has been around. 

As an early connectivity hub for the internet beginning as far back as the 1960s, the corridor secured investment from the largest internet giants in the ’90s and 2000s, including AOL and Yahoo.

In the years following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Buddy Rizer, then an economic development staffer, saw data center development as a recovery play and started pitching the county to tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook.

Rizer, who now heads the county’s economic development arm, has been called the “Godfather of Data Centers” for his efforts in building up the area, known as Data Center Alley.

A spokesperson for Rizer declined to comment for the story, on the basis that it is an “active policy matter.”

County staff are now set to come back to the body next month with proposed language for a pause with assessments of how it could be accomplished within Virginia’s legal framework.

Briskman told Bisnow that while data centers have been a point of concern for her constituents since she started campaigning in 2019, the opposition is intensifying. 

People “feel like the data centers and the commensurate energy infrastructure that comes along with them is really encroaching on their quality of life and even their health, and also it is impacting their costs of living,” she said. 

The county is in the middle of the second phase of an impact study that would establish new guidance and standards for data centers and substations, which is expected to be released in the spring of 2027. Briskman’s proposed pause seeks to allow time for that information to come through before the county continues permitting data center facilities. 

Briskman said if county staff come back to the board and say a moratorium can’t be put in place because the board lacks the legal authority, she would advocate to ask the General Assembly to grant it that authority. 

The one supervisor who voted against the moratorium proposal, Leesburg District Supervisor Kristen Umstattd, told Bisnow she opposed the measure primarily because she believes the board doesn't have the legal authority to institute it — and if it pushes ahead, it could be vulnerable to lawsuits. 

But even if the board had the legal authority, it wouldn’t be an easy yes. Data centers bring in essential tax revenue for the county, she said, arguing that the sector’s growth is going to be necessary with the amount of housing in the pipeline. 

“There will be tremendous school costs that we are not going to be able to pay for without a growing data center cohort in Loudoun County,” she said. “Because housing does not pay for itself when it comes to taxes, largely because of the need for schools.”

Supervisor Sylvia Glass, who represents Broad Run, said in an email she does “not believe the county should be approving more data centers” and would “prefer at least a temporary moratorium,” especially as the council is in the process of its Phase 2 study. 

Her colleague who represents Ashburn, Mike Turner, said in an email the board has for years been advised by the county attorney’s office that moratoriums are not legal in Virginia, but said he would be in support of one if it could be done legally. 

As the process plays out, the development community is closely following along.

Moratoriums, like the one under consideration in Loudoun, are red flags for data center developers, Nicole Riley, director of Virginia government affairs at the Data Center Coalition, told Bisnow in an email.

“Unfortunately, local moratoriums on data centers would send a signal that the area is closed for business, both for data centers and for other significant economic development projects,” she said. “These moratoriums would deprive localities of the opportunity to compete for investment and jobs, while forcing Virginia to relinquish significant long-term economic investment, high-wage jobs, and critical tax revenue to neighboring states.”

QTS, Blackstone’s data center arm, said in a statement the company believes in “transparent conversations, careful planning and collaboration among local leaders, residents, utilities and businesses” and is dedicated to engagement. QTS also pointed to the nearly $2B the company has invested in Loudoun and the impact of that infusion on tax revenues, job creation and other investments in the county.

Lawful Path Forward

Virginia is one of just four states that strictly follow Dillon’s Rule, under which local governments can only exercise powers expressly granted or fairly implied by the state, according to a National League of Cities research brief.

Data center moratoriums aren’t legal in Virginia because the state hasn’t expressly authorized localities to impose them.

“There are relatively few states that follow the Dillon's Rule and the principles of the Dillon Rule as specifically and hold it in as high regard as Virginia,” said Brian Winterhalter, an attorney in DLA Piper’s Reston office who focuses on land use and zoning issues in Northern Virginia.

Attorneys said the lawful path forward for localities to restrict data center development is to amend their zoning ordinances. But if they want to undo the restriction, they would have to go through the process of amending their ordinances twice.

“It's effectively a two-step process,” Riegle said. 

He added that it may be tricky to undo the restriction, especially if people are “perfectly happy with the first decision.”

Several jurisdictions in Virginia are pursuing such zoning text amendments. Frederick County, for example, is considering a zoning amendment that would remove the facilities as an allowed use countywide. Some localities have instituted pauses, like Front Royal’s 90-day moratorium on land use applications, while mulling more permanent policy changes. 

Last September, Fluvanna County staff postponed consideration of data center site plan applications until Jan. 31, 2026, while it considered changes to the county code. Last December, the board amended the code to require special-use permits for data centers in industrial districts.

Lindley said the city of Chesapeake and other localities are legally allowed to postpone processing data center applications because they have a “reasonable” time to act, and that for counties, Virginia code specifies that 12 months is reasonable. 

“And so, we are giving the city 8 months to work on the policy,” she said of Chesapeake’s eight-month application pause, “which we expect will permit us time to comply with legal timelines outlined herein.”