HR 9939
No AI Data Centers on Federal Lands Act
TL;DR
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced this bill to ban the construction and operation of AI data centers on federal public lands. If passed, it would block tech companies from leasing or using federal land (including Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service acreage) for the massive data center campuses needed to train and run AI models.
How This Might Impact Your Business
Hyperscale cloud and AI providers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI infrastructure partners) would lose access to federal land as a siting option for new AI data centers.
Data center developers eyeing western states (Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico) where federal land dominates would need to pivot to private or state-owned parcels, increasing land acquisition costs and timelines.
Energy and utility companies planning to co-locate power generation with AI compute on federal land would face project cancellations or relocations.
Real estate developers and construction firms with pending federal land lease applications for AI infrastructure could see those applications frozen or denied.
No size threshold or small business exemption is specified in the current text, meaning the ban would apply broadly to any AI data center project.
The bill is at the earliest committee stage (House Natural Resources) with no hearing scheduled, and faces a divided Congress, so near-term enactment is unlikely.
Existing data centers already operating on federal land would need to watch for grandfathering language as the bill develops.
What Should You Do
If your infrastructure roadmap includes federal land sites, ask your real estate and government affairs teams to identify private-land alternatives now as a contingency.
Review any pending BLM or Forest Service lease applications tied to AI or high-density compute projects and flag them to legal.
Assign someone to monitor House Natural Resources Committee activity on HR 9939 and track whether companion Senate legislation emerges.
Engage industry associations (Data Center Coalition, ITI) to understand lobbying posture and submit comments if hearings are scheduled.
Reassess site selection criteria for 2025-2026 data center builds to reduce dependence on federal land approvals.
Who It Affects
Sponsors
Status Timeline
committee
Referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources.
July 23, 2026
committee
Referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources.
July 23, 2026