Stop Data Centers Coalition (2026–ongoing)

The Stop Data Centers Coalition is a multi-organization U.S. national advocacy coalition launched on June 12, 2026, by Food & Water Watch as the permanent national structure for coordinating moratorium campaigns on hyperscale AI data center construction. Its coordinating committee spans the environmental-justice, racial-justice, consumer, civic, and health sectors: Citizens Action Coalition, Green Latinos, MediaJustice, North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, Our Revolution, Pennsylvania Physicians for Social Responsibility, Third Act, and Food & Water Watch. The coalition demands a complete halt to new hyperscale data center approvals and construction until communities have enforceable environmental protections, meaningful consent mechanisms, and real accountability over the facilities reshaping their electricity costs, water supplies, and land use.

Coalition formation and federal demand

The coalition crystallized around a congressional moratorium letter delivered on June 11, 2026, signed by more than 520 organizations across 48 states — health, faith, environmental, labor, and community groups — demanding passage of the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced the bill on March 25, 2026; the House companion was introduced by Ocasio-Cortez in June 2026. The bill targets facilities consuming more than 20 megawatts of power — the hyperscale threshold — prohibiting new construction until binding federal environmental and community safeguards are in place. Polling released at the coalition's launch showed 70% of Americans opposed data centers near them and 61% supported a national moratorium.

State and local moratorium victories

The coalition's state-by-state infrastructure produced a rapid sequence of moratorium wins in mid-2026. In New York, Food & Water Watch drafted model legislation alongside State Senator Liz Krueger, generated 12,000+ constituent emails and 1,200 phone calls to state legislators and Governor Hochul, organized 150+ coalition organizations and approximately 500 small business owners into letters of support, and bused over 100 New Yorkers to Albany for lobby days. The New York state legislature passed a one-year moratorium bill on June 4, 2026; on July 14, 2026 Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order pausing construction of data centers 50 megawatts and above statewide — the first such statewide moratorium in the country. Indiana's Citizens Action Coalition organized 27 groups for a statewide moratorium demand and stopped at least a dozen specific proposals. The North Carolina Environmental Justice Network secured passage of at least 17 local moratoria. Pennsylvania advocates won passage of a state bill providing a three-year pause on data center permitting. In late July 2026, Montgomery County, Maryland committees advanced an 18-month local moratorium through the county legislative process.

Relation to the wider data-center opposition movement

The Stop Data Centers Coalition is the federal-and-state-coordinating superstructure atop a longer-running landscape of local community fights. Kairos Fellowship and MediaJustice's Fight Data Centers program — launched from late 2024 — had built the U.S. movement's primary grassroots organising infrastructure (toolkits, regional training, the Site Fight Guide, the data-center hotline) before the coalition formed; MediaJustice's joining the coalition's coordinating committee in June 2026 connected that local organising base to the new federal moratorium track. Food & Water Watch's first call for a national moratorium, in November 2025, preceded the coalition's formal launch by seven months and provided the legislative anchor (the AI Data Center Moratorium Act) around which the multi-org coalition subsequently formed.