Eminent Domain and the Rise of AI Data Centers: Could Your Land Be Next?

Imagine waking up to a notice that a utility company wants to run power lines across your backyard – not for your home, but to juice a massive AI data center miles away. It sounds like a sci‑fi plot, yet experts say it’s becoming a very real legal question.

Aaron Walayat, a law professor at the University of Dayton, laid it out clearly in a recent essay for The Conversation. He points out that several utilities in states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania have started flirting with the idea of using eminent domain – the government’s power to seize private land for “public use” – to lay new transmission corridors that would feed AI‑hungry data farms.

Here’s how it works: if a landowner refuses a utility’s cash offer, the company can ask the local government to step in, label the project a public‑use undertaking, and then pay what the court deems “just compensation.” The seizure is called a condemnation, and while most of the time it’s state or local officials pulling the trigger, utilities can sometimes act as “common carriers” if a state delegates that authority to them.

That isn’t just theory. Courts have repeatedly let utilities and even water firms march forward under eminent‑domain banners. In the early 2000s, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the green light to New London, Connecticut, allowing it to raze homes for a private development tied to a Pfizer plant – a project that ultimately never materialized. The backlash was swift, prompting 45 states to tighten their eminent‑domain rules.

Still, precedents exist that favor utilities. Both South Dakota and Vermont supreme courts upheld power‑line condemnations, reasoning that the lines supplied electricity to in‑state customers and bolstered the local grid. Contrast that with a 1984 Mississippi decision, where the state Supreme Court rejected a similar claim because the line would have served another state, not Mississippi.

All of this is now playing out in Maryland. A 76‑mile transmission line is slated to snake through the state, feeding AI data centers clustered in northern Virginia – the so‑called data‑center capital of the world. Landowners along the route have shouted “no,” arguing that Maryland is being turned into an “extension cord” for distant tech hubs. The utility, PSEG, sued to get access for survey work, and a federal district court sided with the company. The owners have appealed, and the case is still hanging in the balance.

Walayat cautions that each state will react differently, but the Maryland saga shows the hurdles utilities may face if they try to steamroll over private property. He notes that arguments about whether a new line truly serves in‑state customers could become a key battleground for landowners.

So, while you might not see a skyscraper popping up on your farm tomorrow, the legal tug‑of‑war over who gets to power the next generation of AI is already knocking on many doors. Whether you end up with a tidy payout or a courtroom fight may hinge on how courts interpret “public use” in the age of AI.