NJ developer litigation against municipal data center bans (2026)

State of New Jersey — coordinated wave of developer litigation challenging municipal data center bans, live as of September 2026. DEFENDANT MUNICIPALITIES IDENTIFIED: MONTGOMERY, ANDOVER and MONROE townships, with at least three suits pending as of 2026-08-20. LEAD CASE: HEXA BUILDERS v. MONROE TOWNSHIP (Gloucester County), a $300 MILLION claim reported 2026-07-17. PLEADED THEORIES IN THE MONROE CASE: (1) violation of the NEW JERSEY MUNICIPAL LAND USE LAW (N.J.S.A. 40:55D-1 et seq.); (2) violation of the township's own application procedures, arising from officials REVERSING A 2025 ORDINANCE that had permitted data centers — the reliance/vested-rights posture that makes this the strongest of the cases; (3) a FIRST AMENDMENT claim asserting that 'Data centers are a medium of expression and banning data centers would impose a significant burden on the free speech rights of all citizens in the United States.' THE FIRST AMENDMENT THEORY IS RECORDED VERBATIM BECAUSE IT IS NOVEL AND CONSEQUENTIAL IF ACCEPTED: treating data center capacity as protected expressive infrastructure would subject every municipal siting restriction in this dataset to heightened scrutiny rather than rational-basis land-use review. No located source suggests any court has adopted it. COMMON DEVELOPER FRAMING ACROSS THE SUITS: that local officials acted arbitrarily, with one complaint alleging the township committee acted 'based upon public hysteria and political attention rather than sound land use planning.' EXPOSURE: NEARLY THREE DOZEN New Jersey municipalities have adopted data center bans or restrictions — the densest municipal ban wave in the country — so an adverse ruling on the Municipal Land Use Law theory would destabilise a large indexed cohort, including Cherry Hill NJ data center prohibited-use ordinance (2026) and Jersey City NJ data center ban in industrial zones (Ord. 26-057). RELEVANT CONTRAST ALREADY IN THIS DATASET: Garfield Township MI data center and crypto mining ban (2026), where township officials expressly chose a zoning-ordinance-amendment route over a standalone moratorium because, in their words, municipalities that enacted 'knee-jerk moratoriums' without that process 'are being challenged and losing in court.' STATUS: NO MERITS RULING is reflected in any located source. This entry records pending litigation.