Today we learned that one of the two data center developers involved in the key lawsuit about the future of Manassas battlefield will take their case on appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court (for the background, see The Crisis at Manassas Battlefield). The outcome of their appeal will probably settle whether a massive data center development — as planned it would be the largest data center complex in the world — will be built.
The case involves the legality of the decision to rezone the property made by lame duck Prince William County supervisors in December 2023. The lawsuit was brought by the American Battlefield Trust and the local Oak Valley Homeowners Association, which jointly alleged that the rezoning decision violated Virginia law by failing to provide the public notice prescribed by law. The suit was contested by Prince William County government and the developers, Compass Datacenters and QTS. On March 30 the Virginia Court of Appeals confirmed a lower court ruling that the county had indeed failed to follow the lawful process and that the rezoning decision is therefore null and void. Prince William County and Compass Datacenters immediately announced that they would not appeal the circuit court decision. Compass president A.J. Byers issued a statement that “recent legal actions and compounding regulatory hurdles have effectively closed a viable path forward.” But on April 30 — at the end of the thirty day window to appeal — QTS filed its appeal with the state supreme court to overturn the appeals court ruling and reinstate the zoning decision. Without rezoning the project cannot go forward.
“We’d hoped that QTS, the remaining developer, would see the wisdom in also standing down,” American Battlefield Trust President David Duncan wrote today. “We were cautiously optimistic that our five-year fight against this monstrosity of a proposal — 37 data center buildings requiring 14 on-site electrical substations and consuming enough energy to power more than 2 million homes — would be at its end. We were wrong.” The trust and its partners will continue the fight in the Virginia Supreme Court.
Much has changed since this controversy began several years ago. Industrial data centers were then unfamiliar to most Americans and opposition to them was muted. But as ordinary Americans have learned about these massive complexes, which consume vast amounts of electricity and water and blight our landscape, public opinion has turned against them. In 2023, sixty-nine percent of Virginia responding to a poll said they would be comfortable with a data center development in their community. According to a March 2026 poll, that number had dropped to thirty-five percent, with fifty-nine percent of respondents saying they would be “uncomfortable” with a data center in their community.
