Plain-English version of what happened and why it matters more than a single county. Hill County is a rural county south of Fort Worth, in ERCOT territory. On May 12 its commissioners passed — 3 to 2 — a one-year moratorium on new large battery storage, power generation, and data center projects in unincorporated areas, pending an impact study. It was the first county-level data center moratorium in Texas. The lawsuit. On May 27, developer RCM Hill, LLC filed suit in federal court in Austin seeking $100 million in damages. The core legal arguments: • The county 'exceeded its lawful powers' — Texas counties have far narrower land-use authority than cities, and a blanket development moratorium may not be within that authority. • Critically for Cliff's thesis: the moratorium 'threatened their ability to meet standards set by state electricity regulators needed to petition for interconnection.' In plain terms — a pause on building blocks a developer from hitting ERCOT/PUCT interconnection milestones (the Batch Zero / PCLR deadlines this newsletter has been tracking), and missing those milestones is concrete, datable economic harm. RCM Hill argues it suffered damages 'the moment the moratorium was adopted.' The county folded. On June 4, the Hill County Commissioners voted unanimously to rescind the moratorium and replace it with a checklist of requirements data center developers must satisfy — the 'regulate, don't ban' off-ramp. But the $100 million federal damages suit remains active; RCM Hill is still seeking a declaration that the policy was unlawful plus compensation, even though the underlying pause is gone. The broader counter-wave. Hill County is not isolated. In the same window: • Cheyenne, Wyoming — city council rejected a proposed moratorium 8-1. • Pulaski County, Arkansas — a moratorium measure fell one vote short on a recount and is expected to return. • Salisbury, North Carolina — chose a size-cap zoning text amendment instead of a ban (the same off-ramp Hill County landed on). • Calvert County, Maryland (June 17, covered June 21) and Clark County, Nevada (June 17, covered June 20) — a procedural tie and a clean approval, respectively.
Primary source · The Texas Tribune — Texas county rescinds data center moratorium after lawsuit ↗
Why it matters
This is the most strategically important item in two weeks, because the winning legal argument is Cliff's core wedge. (1) RCM Hill did not beat the moratorium on free-speech or takings grounds — it beat it by showing the pause blocked compliance with ERCOT/PUCT interconnection deadlines, which is concrete, datable, and quantifiable economic harm. That is precisely the deadline-tracking and interconnection-timing intelligence Cliff is building. A developer with a clean, timestamped record of which ERCOT milestone a local moratorium causes them to miss has a litigation-ready damages theory — and Cliff's live-docket + PCLR/Batch Zero deadline corpus is the exact evidence base that record is built from. There is a defensible product line here: moratorium-impact documentation for developers, sitting directly on top of the interconnection-deadline data Cliff already maintains. (2) The 'regulate, don't ban' checklist that replaced the Hill County pause (and the Salisbury size-cap amendment) is the off-ramp the whole streak is bending toward under legal pressure. Those checklists and size caps are themselves a structured-document problem — every county that swaps a moratorium for a requirements checklist generates a new local ruleset a developer has to parse and comply with, which is corpus-able. (3) The strategic read on the streak flips: the question is no longer 'how long does the pause wave last' but 'which jurisdictions have moratoriums legally fragile enough that a developer with the right interconnection-timing record can break or deter them.' Texas counties (narrow land-use authority + hard ERCOT deadlines) are the most fragile, which is exactly where Cliff's wedge is strongest.
Related filings
CO HB 1030 / killed 11-2
HB 1030 was Colorado's primary 2026 attempt to attract data-center investment via tax incentives — the bill was first introduced in January and modeled loosely on the sales-and-use exemption regimes that Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska, and...
KUNC / CPR News / The Colorado Sun / The Durango Herald ↗
T+3 PJM bid close Jul 7 / T+3 Lakeland FL first reading Jul 6 9AM / T-6 ERCOT Form W Jul 10 / T+11 PJM auction results Jul 14 / T+16 Lakeland FL final vote Jul 20 / T+23 MD FERC comment deadline Jul 27 / Prince George's MD 2-year moratorium vote queued next week / NY A11560 not delivered to Hochul / 10-day clock not started / 6 deadline windows 24 days
Plain-English rollup of what didn't change over the July 4 weekend and what's coming next week. **ERCOT Batch Zero Form W Part A — T-6 to Thursday July 10.** No change since Thursday. The Interconnecting Large Load Entity (data center operator) must...
T-7 ERCOT ILLE Form W Jul 10 / T-21 Form W step 2 Jul 24 / PJM 2028-29 auction closes Jul 7 / results Jul 14 / price band $175-325 MW-day / 13-state governor pre-negotiated band / MD FERC ratepayer complaint comment deadline Jul 27 extended / NY A11560 not delivered to Hochul / 10-day clock not started / passive enactment plausible / 4 deadline-anchored windows next 24 days
Plain-English background on why the four operational-track deadlines all matter this month. Each of these deadlines drives a specific action by developers, hyperscalers, or state parties, and each represents a concrete moment where Cliff can produce a...
Spartanburg SC / first SC county moratorium / Jun 22 12-0 first reading / pending ordinance doctrine immediate effect / Duke non-RTO territory / NorthMark Pine Street exempt
Plain-English version of what Spartanburg did and why the procedural mechanic matters. Spartanburg County, in the Upstate region of South Carolina, called a 9 a.m. special meeting on June 22 to introduce a 12-month moratorium on all new data center...
WSPA — Spartanburg County Council gives first approval of data center moratorium ↗