Hill County
Texas county south of Dallas whose moratorium on Project Aquila is subject to a $100m lawsuit.
Last refreshed: 2 June 2026
Can a Texas county legally impose a data-centre moratorium, and can Hill County afford to find out?
Timeline for Hill County
Mentioned in: DOE curtailment order faces taking claim
Data Centres: Boom and BacklashEnacted the Project Aquila moratorium 3-2 on 12 May despite legal warnings
Data Centres: Boom and Backlash: Texas developer sues county over pause- Where is Hill County, Texas?
- Hill County is a rural Texas county in the central Blackland Prairie region, about 70 miles south of Dallas. Its county seat is Hillsboro.Source:
- Why did Hill County vote to block a data centre when its own judge said it was illegal?
- Three commissioners voted for the moratorium on 12 May 2026 despite County Judge Shane Brassell calling it illegal and the county attorney warning that Texas counties lack the statutory authority to impose such a restriction. The vote appears to reflect constituent pressure overriding legal advice.Source: KXXV
- Do Texas counties have zoning powers to stop data centres?
- No. Texas counties operate under Dillon's Rule and derive land-use powers only from specific state statutes. Unlike Texas cities, they have no general zoning authority. Hill County's own attorney confirmed this before the moratorium vote, which is central to the RCM Hill lawsuit.Source: KWTX
- What is the Fifth Amendment taking claim against Hill County?
- RCM Hill LLC argues that Hill County's moratorium constitutes a regulatory taking: a government restriction so severe it effectively deprives the developer of its property's economic use without paying compensation. The complaint invokes the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and the Texas Constitution, and the developer can point to $80 million in signed contracts and a $61.75 million ERCOT deposit deadline to establish investment-backed expectations.Source: KWTX
Background
Hill County is a rural Texas county whose seat is Hillsboro, situated roughly 70 miles south of Dallas in the central Blackland Prairie region. Its commissioners court became the first county-level government in Texas to attempt a moratorium on a named data-centre development when it voted 3-2 on 12 May 2026 to pause RCM Hill LLC's Project Aquila campus, a 1,235 MW facility planned across 800-plus acres of farmland. The vote was taken despite County Judge Shane Brassell calling it "illegal" from the bench and county attorney David Holmes warning that commissioners lacked statutory authority to enact it.
The constitutional gap underlying the vote is structural: Texas operates under a modified Dillon's Rule for county governments, meaning counties may exercise only those land-use powers expressly granted by the legislature. Unlike Texas municipalities, which hold annexation and zoning authority under the Local Government Code, Texas counties have no general zoning statute and cannot impose land-use moratoriums on specific developments without a specific enabling provision. The county attorney's on-record warning before the vote tracks this gap precisely. RCM Hill LLC filed a $100 million lawsuit on 28 May 2026 invoking regulatory taking under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and the Texas Constitution.
The case carries significance beyond Hill County. A ruling that void-ab-initio applies to county moratoriums in Texas would effectively clear the legal field for data-centre developers across the state's rural counties. The same constitutional vulnerability does not apply to Texas cities, which hold broader police powers, nor to state-level freezes like Maine's (which cleared its legislature with proper statutory authority). Hill County's moratorium represents the weakest point in the US backlash landscape, combining the narrowest legal authority with the highest financial stakes for the developer.