Data center opponents seek interim zoning as Yellowstone County official cites roadblock from new state law

Montana Free Press · Phoebe Tollefson · September 7, 2026

Passions continue to run high in Yellowstone County over a massive data center planned outside the town of Broadview, with opponents vowing to maintain pressure on local officials.

In hopes of securing some control over the nearly 8-square-mile development, those opponents have most recently turned to interim zoning as a potential tool.

Under Montana law, county commissioners can vote to enact an interim zoning district, or interim regulations, to address an “emergency that involves the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.” The interim zoning or regulations would pause development for one year while the county gathers information about the project and decides whether it warrants permanent restrictions. Missoula County enacted similar interim zoning on data centers in July .

But officials in Yellowstone County think a new state law prevents them from enacting such zoning, even as a dozen or so members of the public asked county commissioners to take that step at a meeting Thursday.

Billings attorney Gene Jarussi was the main proponent of interim zoning at that meeting. He echoed another speaker who said that data centers could “be positive” for the community, if “done right.”

“You’re not saying ‘no data center,’ you’re not saying ‘yes data center.’ That’s beyond you,” Jarussi told the county commissioners. “But you can say, if we have a data center, we want to know that we’re not going to be dealing with common law nuisances [such as noise and light pollution] that other states have been dealing with.”

Jarussi and Yellowstone County Attorney Scott Twito went toe-to-toe during the meeting with their competing legal interpretations.

Twito said he and other county officials have been receiving guidance from the Montana Association of Counties on how actions to restrict data center operators could conflict with a new state law, the Right to Compute Act.

The Right to Compute Act was passed in 2025 with bipartisan support: 61-38 in the House and 50-0 in the Senate. Sen. Daniel Zolnikov, R-Billings, sponsored the bill.

Often described as the first of its kind in the U.S., the law says that any government action that hampers the freedom to own and use software, algorithms and other technologies must be narrowly tailored to protect the public and that the government can’t enact those restrictions if there are “less restrictive means” available.

The law has not yet been tested in court.

Jarussi thinks the Quantica project proposed in Broadview is the perfect candidate for the government restrictions. He said the Legislature built into the new law the ability for local governments to prevent emergencies, rather than just react to them.

“It’s right on the books,” he said.

Separate from the new Right to Compute Act, Jarussi said case law, or past court rulings, is on his side. Like the new Right to Compute Act, Jarussi said, case law “also holds that you do not have to wait till the train is on top of you before you deal with that oncoming light.”

But Twito disagrees. He said the language of the new law favors the rights of the developers and that it would be difficult to prove that an emergency exists — as is required for interim zoning — without more specific information about the project, such as how loud the company expects the data center to be.

Twito said that if the county commission voted to enact interim zoning, it would likely trigger a lawsuit by Quantica Infrastructure, although he didn’t name the company in his public comments.

“We have an entity that is interested in this, right?” he said, addressing the county commissioners. “And so they’re going to challenge this if we do this. And so I’m going to have to try to defend this action. That’s a concern.”

The Montana Association of Counties Executive Director Eric Bryson wrote in an email to Montana Free Press that the Right to Compute Act sets a high bar for government intervention, by tying it “directly to public health and safety.”

“Issues like noise or compatibility with growth policies or zoning won’t suffice to restrict or control siting of data centers, in our opinion,” Bryson wrote.

At a June conference that MACo hosted for county officials from across the state, representatives from other states shared cautionary tales about their experiences attempting to rein in data center developers.

For instance, Linn County officials in Iowa negotiated for months with Google to reach a zoning ordinance palatable to both county residents and the tech giant. Google planned to build a data center on a selected parcel of land in Linn County. But at the last minute, Google abandoned the proposed deal and said instead it was pursuing annexation with a nearby city, which would exempt it from any county restrictions.

“The unknown is frustrating, and it’s scary to a lot of people. I agree with a lot of those arguments,” Twito said at the meeting Thursday. “I’m just telling you that I don’t think the law is going to allow us to do what a lot of these folks want us to do.”

The Board of County Commissioners is not expected to act on the interim zoning request. Questions by commissioners for Twito focused on the limits of county government authority under Montana law and the financial liabilities the county could incur if sued by Quantica.

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