Thor Equities, LLC v. City of Urbana, Ohio (Data Center Moratorium and Targeted Rezoning Suit)
Thor Equities sued Urbana, Ohio in federal court, saying the city passed an emergency moratorium and rezoned its land to block a $1 billion, 460,000-square-foot data center after Thor had already spent $19.6 million on the project.
Thor Equities, LLC sued the City of Urbana, Ohio, its city council, and its building and zoning appeals board in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on June 19, 2026, after the city adopted a 12-month emergency moratorium on data-center development and then rezoned Thor's own parcel to exclude data centers from the M-1 manufacturing district that had previously permitted them. Thor's complaint alleges the moratorium and the city's handling of its administrative appeal violated Ohio law, Urbana's city charter, the zoning code as it stood when Thor applied, and federal due process protections.
Why it matters: The case is one of the sharpest tests yet of vested-rights protection against a municipality's sudden reversal on a specific, already-pending data-center application, distinguishing it from more generic, districtwide moratorium challenges elsewhere. Developers weighing large site-plan submissions in jurisdictions facing resident opposition to data centers, and municipalities considering a moratorium targeted at a specific pending project, should watch how the Southern District of Ohio resolves the due-process and vested-rights claims here.
