The city used home rule zoning authority — a power Texas grants its largest cities — to bar data centers in every district. A state senator has already named the two statutes he will use to challenge it.
San Marcos, a Central Texas city of about 65,000 between Austin and San Antonio, has become the first Texas city to use its zoning code to ban data centers outright, according to the Texas Tribune as reported by KXXV. The 4-3 vote on June 16 redefines data centers as an ineligible use in every zoning district inside city limits. The legal question now is whether the ban survives a challenge from a state senator who has already named the statutes he intends to use against it.
The city's authority comes from Texas's home-rule system, which grants roughly 352 larger Texas cities the power to write their own zoning codes, according to KXXV. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who chairs the Senate Local Government committee, has said he plans to challenge the San Marcos ban under two state laws that restrict how cities can block certain property uses: 2025's House Bill 2559, which limits indefinite municipal moratoriums on certain developments, and the 2023 Death Star Law, so nicknamed by critics for its wide preemptive reach, which bars city ordinances that contradict state policy, per KXXV.
Council members cited concerns that data centers would divert water and power away from the local community, according to KXXV. No data center project is currently proposed inside San Marcos city limits, according to KXXV. At least two data centers have been proposed in unincorporated Hays County along the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio, per Data Center Map.
Hays County commissioners passed a non-binding pause resolution citing severe water scarcity, but Texas counties lack home-rule zoning authority and cannot ban data centers outright, per KXXV. Hill County rescinded its data center moratorium after a developer sued the county for $100 million, per KXXV. Hood County pulled its proposed moratorium after Bettencourt asked the attorney general for an opinion on whether counties had the authority to impose one, per KXXV.
Bettencourt has said a flat ban — not a temporary moratorium — is exactly the kind of municipal action that HB 2559 and the Death Star Law were written to stop, according to KXXV.