Federal Judge Orders Wilmington, OH to Redo Three Ordinances for Amazon's $4B Data Center — Open Meetings Violation

A federal court ordered the City of Wilmington (Clinton County, OH) to redo three ordinances — on generator noise, rezoning, and data centers as permitted land use — before it can consider Amazon Web Services’ proposed $4 billion data center site plan. The court found the city violated Ohio’s open meetings law when it passed the ordinances without adequate public notice. The order was issued July 14; Wilmington City Council scheduled a public hearing on the three affected ordinances for August 20, creating a procedural delay of at least two to three months before the site plan can advance.

This is a rare instance of a federal court, rather than a local council vote, halting a hyperscaler siting process — the open-meetings-violation theory is a legal template distinct from the moratorium and zoning-denial mechanisms the timeline has tracked at dozens of other jurisdictions, since it attacks the procedural validity of ordinances already passed rather than blocking a new application.

Corrected 2026-10-01: removed the judge’s name (“Jeffery Hopkins”) and the claim the ordinances were “passed in 2025” — neither cited source (WCPO, WYSO) names the judge or states a year for when the ordinances were originally passed.