Power companies building transmission lines for AI data centers may be able to force landowners to sell property, according to a July 16 legal analysis in The Conversation by Aaron Walayat, an assistant professor of law at the University of Dayton.
The mechanism is eminent domain, the old and often unpopular government power that allows private property to be taken for public use with compensation. Walayat wrote that governments can delegate that power to certain private entities, including utilities and common carriers. In practice, that means a utility does not necessarily have to stop a transmission project because one landowner refuses to sell.
The data center angle is where this gets politically radioactive. AI projects are pushing electricity demand higher, and many facilities pull power from the grid. As operators move into gigawatt-scale campuses, utilities are being pressed to add infrastructure, including new transmission lines. Those lines have to go somewhere, and “somewhere” may be across privately owned land.
According to Walayat, the usual sequence is less cinematic than a bulldozer arriving at dawn. A power company first tries to buy the land or secure rights for the project. If the owner declines, the company may seek to use eminent domain through the legal authority granted by the government. The owner must receive just compensation, and the project must qualify as a public use.
The public-use test is the fight
Walayat’s analysis says eminent domain is not a cheat code. A company still has to show that the infrastructure serves a public purpose. Transmission lines that strengthen the grid may fit that category, but the legal fight can become messier when the new capacity is closely tied to a private data center.
State law also matters. Walayat wrote that states can interpret eminent domain through their own constitutions, which means the answer may vary depending on where the line is built. That is the part many glossy AI infrastructure decks prefer to skip: local land-use law does not vanish because a cluster needs more megawatts.
The legal question is landing amid broader resistance to data center construction in the United States. The report cited concerns over land use, noise, water use and electricity consumption. It also cited reporting that 70 percent of Americans oppose data centers being built near their homes.
Some projects have run into organized opposition. The report said opponents blocked 75 planned data center projects in the first quarter of 2026. It also pointed to the 2,100-acre Digital Gateway project in Virginia, which was ultimately canceled after a newspaper-notice technicality. Other projects continue to advance, sometimes with local support. Meta recently said it planned to expand its Hyperion AI supercluster from 2 gigawatts to 5 gigawatts.
For landowners, the practical takeaway from Walayat’s analysis is blunt: refusing to sell may not end a transmission project. For utilities and data center developers, the harder part may be proving that infrastructure built to feed private compute campuses still clears the public-use bar.
This story draws on original reporting from Tom's Hardware.
