AI Laws in Dayton, Ohio
AI Laws USA tracks 22 AI rules that apply to people and businesses in Dayton, Ohio: 10+ federal rules, 11 Ohio state-level rules, and 1 local Dayton ordinance. Coverage is strongest on government use of AI, consumer protection, data-center siting and energy, and automated decision-making. 11 of these rules are already in effect. Each entry below links to its official source.
Dayton local AI rules (and Montgomery County)
1 local AI rule specific to Dayton, Ohio or Montgomery County.
-
In effect Strength: moderate
Dayton OH data center moratorium (180-day, Apr 2026)
Dayton, OH · Effective April 22, 2026 · Dayton City Commission moratorium resolution (April 22, 2026)
Dayton City Commission passed a 180-day moratorium on April 22, 2026, pausing acceptance and processing of applications for zoning, building permits, and other approvals for large data centers in the city. City staff were directed to develop permanent data-center zoning regulations; on June 22 commissioners held a public hearing on a proposed permanent ban on large data centers in all city zones, with a final vote scheduled June 24. The June 24 outcome was not confirmed in search results as of June 25.
Ohio-level AI rules most relevant to Dayton
11 Ohio state rules apply to residents and businesses in Dayton. Showing the 8 most relevant to Dayton's local picture; 3 more are on the Ohio jurisdiction page.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
Ohio PUCO data center energy service tariff, 85% minimum take (2025)
Ohio · Effective July 23, 2025 · Ohio — PUCO-approved AEP Ohio data center energy service tariff (July 2025), O.R.C. § 4909.18; 85% minimum subscribed-usage payment, 25 MW threshold, up to 12 years
In July 2025 the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved what a legal survey describes as 'a landmark tariff structure' for data center electricity service. Its core requirement is a MINIMUM TAKE: new data center customers must PAY FOR AT LEAST 85% OF THEIR SUBSCRIBED ELECTRICITY USAGE, REGARDLESS OF ACTUAL CONSUMPTION, for UP TO 12 YEARS. Understanding why that is a consumer protection requires seeing the problem it solves. When a data center asks a utility for hundreds of megawatts, the utility must plan, and often build, generation and transmission to serve it. Those costs are recovered from the whole ratepayer base over decades. If the data center then uses far less than it subscribed for — because the project shrank, the AI buildout slowed, or it was only ever speculative interest at several sites at once — the infrastructure still exists and everyone else pays for it. A minimum-take provision moves that risk onto the party that caused it. Subscribe for 500 megawatts and you pay for at least 425, whether you use it or not. It also does something subtler and arguably more valuable: it disciplines the forecast. A developer shopping the same nominal load around five utilities has every reason to overstate demand when subscription is free and no reason to do so when 85% of it is a binding financial commitment. Much of the grid-planning anxiety recorded throughout this dataset — PJM's 2030 reliability warnings, the substation-capacity constraints Eureka's planners described, the ratepayer bills in Tennessee, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Arizona — rests on load forecasts that may be inflated by exactly this dynamic. Ohio's tariff is the mechanism most directly aimed at it, and it operates through utility regulation rather than zoning, which means it reaches every data center in the service territory without any municipality having to act.
-
In effect Strength: moderate
Ohio PUCO data center default service notice order (2026)
Ohio · Effective August 5, 2026 · Pub. Utils. Comm'n of Ohio, Order re AEP Ohio data center default service notice (Aug. 2026)
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio ordered AEP Ohio to put protections in place against data center energy costs falling on other customers. The mechanism addresses a specific and easily overlooked risk: a data center that has been buying power on the competitive market can decide to return to the utility's default service, and if it does so without warning, the utility must find that energy on short notice — at whatever price the market happens to be, with the cost landing on everyone. Under the order, data centers must give AEP Ohio 180 days' notice of an intent to return to default service, and AEP Ohio will then secure the energy through separate auctions or spot-market purchases rather than folding it into the general supply. This builds on the tariff PUCO ordered in July 2025, under which data center customers above 25 megawatts must pay for at least 85% of their subscribed monthly capacity for twelve years, with a four-year ramp-up and an exit fee equal to three years of minimum charges. Ohio has been among the most active states on data center cost allocation, and the 2025 tariff was widely treated as a national template.
-
In effect Strength: moderate
Ohio — DeWine pause of the data center sales tax exemption program (2026)
Ohio · Effective May 27, 2026 · Ohio — Gov. DeWine pause of O.R.C. § 122.175 data center sales and use tax exemption, announced May 27 2026; Ohio Tax Credit Authority directed to stop accepting applications
Ohio's data center sales and use tax exemption, codified at O.R.C. § 122.175, has been the state's principal financial inducement for data center investment. IN MAY 2026 GOV. MIKE DEWINE PAUSED THE PROGRAM. No end date is stated. This belongs in a protection dataset for the same reason the New Jersey and Ohio tax bills do: withdrawing a subsidy is a different lever from restricting a use, and in some respects a more powerful one. A moratorium tells a developer it must wait. A zoning prohibition tells it to go elsewhere in the state. Suspending the sales tax exemption changes the arithmetic of building in Ohio at all, and it does so without any municipality acting and without raising the vested-rights and litigation-capacity problems that have defeated local pauses elsewhere in this dataset. It is also striking as an executive act. Everything else on this question in Ohio is legislative and pending: HB 646 would impose sweeping data center restrictions on electricity use, water conservation and tax exemptions; SB 374 and HB 957 would each amend § 122.175 to prohibit new data center sales tax exemptions outright; HB 775 touches the section as part of a much larger bill. None of those has passed. The Governor did not wait for them. The pause is correspondingly fragile in exactly the way the statutes would not be — an executive suspension of a statutory program can be lifted by the same or a successor Governor without legislative involvement, which is why the bills still matter. Ohio's local picture is the most extensive in the country: at least 138 municipalities and townships had active data center moratoriums as of September 2026, with 23 effective bans. The state-level story is that the money is being turned off at the same time.
-
In effect Strength: limited
AEP Ohio Data Center Tariff Order (Case 24-0508-EL-ATA)
Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (AEP Ohio) · Effective July 9, 2025 · AEP Ohio Data Center Tariff Order (Case 24-0508-EL-ATA)
The Ohio PUC adopted a settlement creating a new data center customer class for loads of 25 MW or greater, requiring those customers to pay for at least 85% of contracted capacity for a minimum 12-year term plus exit fees and financial assurances to prevent cost-shifting to other customers.
-
Proposed / pending
Ohio bill to prohibit data center property tax exemptions (2026)
Ohio · Ohio — House bill to prohibit property tax exemptions for data centers (2026) (proposed)
Earlier in September 2026, a group of Ohio House members LARGELY REPRESENTING URBAN AREAS introduced a bill to PROHIBIT PROPERTY TAX EXEMPTIONS FOR DATA CENTERS. This attacks the incentive rather than the land use, and it is one of a small but growing set of measures in this dataset that do so — alongside New Jersey Assemblywoman Quijano's bill suspending subsidies and tax incentives, and Illinois's pause on its state data center incentives. The contrast with the rest of the dataset matters. Almost every other measure here is a zoning instrument: a moratorium, a setback, a conditional use permit, a prohibition. Those tell a developer where it may build. A property tax exemption tells a developer whether building there is worth it at all. Removing the exemption does not forbid anything — it simply stops the public from paying for the project. The commentary that surfaced this bill frames the evaluation usefully, asking of any such policy: does it work, does it help, and who does it help. On 'does it work', it notes that OLDER LITERATURE on economic development incentives suggests only about 2 to 25 PERCENT of projects make their location decisions based on incentives, while NEWER STUDIES FOCUSED SPECIFICALLY ON DATA CENTER INCENTIVES reach different conclusions. Property tax exemptions are a significant tool with a large impact on LOCAL GOVERNMENT BUDGETS, which is why urban legislators — whose jurisdictions bear school and municipal revenue losses — are the ones sponsoring this. The Ohio context is the most striking in the country: AT LEAST 138 OHIO MUNICIPALITIES AND TOWNSHIPS HAVE ACTIVE DATA CENTER MORATORIUMS as of September 17, 2026, with 23 communities having effectively banned data centers and at least 23 more across seven counties considering it. A state bill removing the tax exemption would operate across all of them at once.
-
In effect Strength: limited
OH HB 7 (2022 AV)
Ohio · Effective September 13, 2022 · Ohio Rev. Code §§ 4501.01, 4511.01, 4511.991
Ohio's 2022 statute codified what had been executive-order policy under DriveOhio: fully driverless AV operation is allowed, the registered owner is the legal operator for traffic enforcement, AV networks must carry $5 million in insurance, and the state must maintain an AV testing program (the Smart Mobility / TRC framework).
-
In effect Strength: limited
OH PDD law (SB 156)
Ohio · Effective April 4, 2019 · Ohio Rev. Code § 4511.513
Ohio authorized sidewalk delivery robots up to 200 lb (one of the highest weight caps in the country) and up to 10 mph, with $100,000 in liability insurance. Local governments retain authority to set additional operating rules.
-
In effect Strength: moderate
Ohio statewide school AI policy mandate (2026)
Ohio · Effective September 30, 2025 · Ohio — statutory requirement that public school districts adopt an artificial intelligence policy (effective for the 2026-27 school year)
Under a new state law, every Ohio public school district is REQUIRED to adopt a formal artificial intelligence policy, with the requirement biting as the 2026-27 school year began. Ohio is reported as the FIRST STATE IN THE NATION to impose such a requirement. Districts have a choice of route: they may customize their own guidelines, or they may adopt the policy created by the Ohio Department of Education. That second option is what makes the mandate workable. A requirement that every district write an AI policy from scratch would fall hardest on small and rural districts with no technology staff and no capacity to evaluate vendor claims; offering a state-drafted model means compliance is achievable everywhere, and a district that does nothing else can still adopt the default. Maryland took a similar approach in the same period through its AI Ready Schools Act, which requires every local education agency to adopt a policy within 120 days of state guidance and directs the state to publish an evaluative rubric for AI tools — but Ohio is credited with being first to make the district policy itself mandatory. The state mandate requires districts to set official guidelines governing how STUDENTS AND STAFF use AI in the classroom, and local leaders are described as balancing classroom integration against safeguards for privacy, academic integrity and foundational learning.
Federal AI rules that apply in Dayton, Ohio
These federal rules apply everywhere in the United States, including Dayton, Ohio. Showing the 10 strongest and most recent.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
TVA data center capacity commitment charge (2026)
Tennessee Valley Authority · Effective October 1, 2026 · Tenn. Valley Auth. Bd. of Dirs. — Data Center Capacity Commitment Charge (approved Aug. 20, 2026; eff. Oct. 1, 2026)
The Tennessee Valley Authority's Board of Directors approved a separate, higher wholesale rate for data centers on August 20, 2026, effective October 1. New or expanding data center loads above 5 megawatts now fall under a Capacity Commitment Charge attached to TVA's data center rate schedules, designed to recover the incremental capacity costs those customers impose on the system. The headline figures are substantial: upfront capacity commitment charges of roughly $1.5 million per megawatt, payable over three to five years, and an all-in average billing increase for data center customers of about 10%, phased in across three consecutive fiscal years. The stated purpose is to keep residential rates low while still serving growing data center demand. TVA matters here out of proportion to a single utility. It is a federal corporate agency supplying power across seven states, so this is not a state rate case but a regional cost-allocation decision reaching a large share of the Southeast — and TVA is among the first large US utilities to adopt a tariff aimed specifically at AI-driven load. Where most 2026 measures in this dataset restrict where data centers may be built, this one changes what they pay to run.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
Bartz v. Anthropic
N.D. Cal. · Effective September 5, 2025 · Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, No. 3:24-cv-05417 (N.D. Cal.)
Authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson sued Anthropic over its use of pirated-book datasets to train Claude. In June 2025 Judge William Alsup ruled that training on lawfully purchased books was fair use. The piracy claims (LibGen ingestion) proceeded toward settlement; in September 2025 Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion class settlement covering ~500,000 works. Judge Alsup granted preliminary approval September 25, 2025 and final approval July 20, 2026. The appeal period runs through August 19, 2026; class members will not receive payments until at least end of 2026.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
COPPA + 2025 Rule (childrens data)
United States · Effective June 23, 2025 · 15 U.S.C. §§ 6501–6506; 16 C.F.R. Part 312
COPPA requires online services aimed at children under 13 to get verifiable parental consent before collecting kids' personal data. The 2025 rule update — fully in effect since April 22, 2026 — adds biometric identifiers (like face templates and voiceprints, which matter for AI tools), requires separate parental consent before sharing children's data for targeted advertising, and tightens data retention limits.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
TAKE IT DOWN Act
United States · Effective May 19, 2025 · Pub. L. No. 119-12 (S. 146)
Makes it a federal crime to knowingly publish intimate images of someone without consent, including AI-generated deepfakes. Social media and similar platforms must give victims a way to request removal and must take the content (and known copies) down within 48 hours. The platform removal requirement became enforceable May 19, 2026, and the FTC has already begun enforcement.
-
Blocked / in litigation
NetChoice v. Yost (Ohio)
S.D. Ohio · Effective April 16, 2025 · NetChoice, LLC v. Yost, No. 2:24-cv-00047 (S.D. Ohio Apr. 16, 2025)
Ohio's Social Media Parental Notification Act — requiring parental consent for minors' social-media use, including algorithmic feeds — was preliminarily enjoined on February 12, 2024, then permanently enjoined on April 16, 2025 when the district court granted summary judgment for NetChoice. The state appealed to the Sixth Circuit, which vacated the district court's injunction in 2026.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
Thaler v. Perlmutter (Copyright)
D.C. Cir. · Effective March 18, 2025 · Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025)
The companion copyright case: Stephen Thaler sought to register a copyright with 'Creativity Machine' (his AI) as the author. The D.C. Circuit affirmed in March 2025 that the Copyright Act's human-authorship requirement is dispositive as a matter of statutory law. AI cannot be a copyright author under U.S. law.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
Louis v. SafeRent
D. Mass. · Effective November 20, 2024 · Louis v. SafeRent Solutions, LLC, No. 1:22-cv-10800 (D. Mass.)
SafeRent agreed in November 2024 to a $2.275M settlement and a five-year ban on using its 'SafeRent Score' for housing-voucher applicants, after a class action alleged its AI tenant-screening tool systematically denied housing to Black and Hispanic Section 8 voucher holders. The first major AI tenant-screening Fair Housing Act settlement.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
FTC Impersonation Rule (AI)
United States · Effective April 1, 2024 · 16 C.F.R. Part 461; 89 Fed. Reg. 15017
The FTC's Impersonation Rule lets the agency directly sue scammers who pretend to be a government agency or a real business — including those who use AI-cloned voices or generated images to do so. Civil penalties can reach $53,088 per violation. The FTC also issued a supplemental notice in February 2024 proposing to extend the rule to all individual impersonation.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
FTC v. Rite Aid
FTC · Effective February 26, 2024 · FTC v. Rite Aid Corp., No. 2:23-cv-05023 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 19, 2023)
The FTC banned Rite Aid from using facial-recognition technology in its stores for five years after finding the pharmacy chain's FRT system falsely tagged customers — disproportionately women and people of color — as shoplifters, leading to wrongful detentions and humiliations.
-
In effect Strength: stronger
TCPA (AI voice calls)
United States · Effective February 8, 2024 · 47 U.S.C. § 227; FCC 24-17
Robocalls using AI-cloned or AI-generated voices are treated like other 'artificial voice' calls: callers need your prior express consent, must identify themselves, and must offer opt-outs for telemarketing. You can personally sue violators for $500 to $1,500 per illegal call.
Frequently asked questions about AI laws in Dayton, Ohio
Are there AI laws in Dayton, Ohio?
What federal AI rules apply in Dayton?
Does Ohio have an AI privacy law?
Are deepfakes illegal in Ohio?
Can my employer use AI to screen me for jobs in Dayton?
How do I report an AI law violation in Dayton?
Are facial recognition cameras allowed in Dayton?
Is Dayton regulated by Ohio's consumer privacy act?
Have we missed an AI rule in Dayton?
This page is generated from our open civic dataset. If you know of a Dayton ordinance, county rule, or local enforcement action we should add, email feedback@ailawsusa.com or submit a correction. Every entry must include a verifiable source.