(CNN) — Memphis leaders are set to consider a contentious plan Tuesday to pause new data center developments for up to a year — two weeks after a meeting on the issue led to protests, calls to police and a fist fight at City Hall.
The moratorium vote comes more than two years after some communities in Memphis got a new life courtesy of trillionaire Elon Musk, as his artificial intelligence company moved in amid a local effort to make the city a hotspot for advanced technology. But the effort ended up angering residents as the company installed dozens of gas-powered turbines, known to produce a cocktail of toxic pollutants.
A surge of new data center construction to fuel the booming AI industry is escalating public resentment and fear of both the energy-sucking infrastructure and AI itself in the US, roiling communities from coast to coast and transforming localized energy debates into a high-stakes, multi-million-dollar battleground for the 2026 midterm elections.
At an early October council meeting in Memphis — a city used to fighting for clean air as the home to more than a dozen polluting facilities — fierce opposition was on full display. More than 100 people filed into the chamber to hear about the moratorium, bearing witness to clashes between anti-data center protesters and council members, and between the city officials themselves. Two women were also restrained in the lobby as they swung fists at each other.
All eyes will be on City Hall as it considers the moratorium, which, if passed, would put a temporary pause on new data centers and on the expansion of existing ones, as well as develop a study committee to establish regulations. It would not shutter data centers already operating legally in Memphis, nor smaller data usages at facilities like hospitals and universities.
“We’re not saying no to data centers forever; we’re saying slow it down so that we can make the necessary adjustments so that we can protect neighborhoods and property value, so we can make sure there’s not a detrimental impact on the environment,” Memphis City Council Member JB Smiley Jr., sponsor of the moratorium, told anchor Brianna Keilar on CNN News Central on Tuesday. “We have to make sure we’re putting people before profits.”
Smiley said he expects 400 to 500 people to show up at City Hall on Tuesday to demand a data center moratorium.
Here’s what we know:
How Memphis got here
An abandoned factory in southwest Memphis got a makeover in June 2024, as the AI company owned by the world’s richest man, now called SpaceXAI, worked to turn the building into the “world’s largest supercomputer.”
Dubbed “Colossus,” the data center was hailed by Musk at the time as the “most powerful AI training system in the world,” and the company’s website heralded plans for a second facility in the area to quickly follow.
For some residents in the southwest Memphis suburb of Boxtown, a historic, majority Black and economically disadvantaged community that has long endured industrial pollution, the new gas-powered turbines represented yet another threat to their health. About 10 miles to the east in Southaven, Mississippi, more SpaceXAI turbines would chug to life at the new site of Colossus 2 — which fuels its Grok AI chatbot.
CNN has reached out to SpaceXAI for comment.
The NAACP filed a federal lawsuit against SpaceXAI in April of this year under the Clean Air Act, alleging it was operating dozens of unpermitted turbines in Southaven. The Department of Justice has since urged the court to throw out the lawsuit, saying the Grok AI chatbot was “critical” to national security. The case remains active, though tied up in appeals.
The data centers have also caused a myriad of disruptions to daily life in Memphis, including relentless noise pollution and physical vibrations from the centers as described in a noise complaint filed by residents; concerns of dangerous emissions from the turbines brought by state officials; and an offer from SpaceXAI to buy Southaven residents’ homes in exchange for not signing onto a class action lawsuit against it.
But it was at an August meeting — where the moratorium passed its first reading — that Smiley said he proposed the measure to temporarily halt new data center builds after learning Musk’s company was planning a data center expansion in the city from a post on social media.
“Not only did the council not know about the expansion of the data center, the community residents did not know,” Smiley said at the meeting. “I was intentional about bringing this ordinance because I think the people deserve an opportunity to voice their concerns; I think the council deserves to be treated with respect by the folks who are pushing these data centers in our community.”
An earlier council meeting on data centers devolved into chaos
Members of the Memphis City Council voted on whether to delay making a decision on the moratorium for two weeks at an October 6 meeting. When the effort to delay passed 7-5, the chamber erupted.
“Officers, we need to clear it out,” council Chairwoman Jana Swearengen-Washington said from the podium as observers began shouting. As people rose from their seats in the chamber and a woman shouted chants into a megaphone speaker, the chairwoman repeatedly slammed her gavel, saying, “Get that f**king bullhorn!”
A livestream of the meeting showed dozens of protesters gathering at the front of the room, fists in the air as they chanted above the council members’ shouts to stop, yelling, “Ain’t no power like the power of the people ‘cause the power of the people fight back!” before the livestream went dark.
Councilwoman Yolanda Cooper-Sutton clashed with members of the crowd, according to CNN affiliate WMC, as she told one attendee, “You pipe down baby, I clap back.” She also lashed out at Smiley, who voted against postponing the vote on his moratorium, shouting that he “confuse(s) the people over and over,” as she was ushered out of the room by staffers.
In the lobby of the building, a fist fight broke out between two women, WMC reported.
Memphis police were called to the disturbance at City Hall, but according to WMC, a department spokesperson said no one was harmed or detained.
Days after the chaotic meeting, Memphis Mayor Paul Young issued an executive order to establish a 90-day study “to develop clear, actionable recommendations for regulating large and hyperscale data centers in Memphis.”
“The study will proceed concurrently with the Memphis City Council’s ongoing consideration of data center legislation,” the mayor’s office wrote in a press release. “The executive order does not suspend, delay, restrict, or interfere with Council action.”
Judge halts ban of state lawmaker, five others, from Tuesday’s meeting
In a First Amendment lawsuit filed last week, state Rep. Justin J. Pearson and five others said they were banned from attending Tuesday’s City Council meeting after opposing AI data centers at the October 6 meeting and asked the court to block the ban.
US District Court Judge Thomas L. Parker for the Western District of Tennessee on Tuesday granted the temporary restraining order in part, arguing that doing so furthered the public interest.
“The public has an interest in orderly City Council Meetings, but ‘the public interest also favors an unbridled marketplace of ideas, especially when those ideas are unpopular or critical of a government official,’” the judge wrote in his order hours before the city council meeting.
Before Tuesday’s meeting, Pearson praised the TRO at a news conference and called the ban meritless.
“The billionaires who build data centers and the politicians who are trying to help them are trying to silence the voices of people who are standing up to them,” Pearson said.
In separate letters addressed to the individuals stating that they have been banned from the upcoming Tuesday and November 10 sessions — all signed by Swearengen-Washington, according to documents filed — the council cited alleged violations of its