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The AI infrastructure buildout has entered a new phase of friction with the public: power utilities are invoking eminent domain to compel homeowners to sell land needed for transmission lines serving data centers.

The mechanism is legal, well-established, and — in the AI context — newly controversial.

How It Works

Eminent domain is the inherent government power to take private property for public use, with compensation. In the US, utilities often hold delegated eminent domain authority for infrastructure construction. When landowners refuse to sell voluntarily, the utility can file to compel the sale at assessed market value.

Georgia Power, one of the utilities now using this authority, told CBS News that a new transmission line is needed because AI data center demand has outpaced the existing grid. In cases where landowners refuse, the company described eminent domain as “a last resort” used in under 1% of right-of-way acquisitions.

For the homeowners in that 1%, it doesn’t feel like a margin rounding error.

One Georgia family told CBS the ultimatum they received was explicit: “Sell your home, or the state will take it.” Their characterization of the process: “It’s theft.”

The Scale of the Problem

Power demand from AI data centers has grown faster than any other grid load in recent US history. The situation is not limited to Georgia: similar disputes are documented or emerging in multiple states as utilities build out transmission capacity to serve hyperscale campuses.

The pattern follows the load. Data center developers typically secure land and power agreements. The data center itself requires a substation and high-voltage transmission connections. Those connections require linear right-of-way — contiguous paths through private land — and straight-line paths through suburbs or rural areas are often not available through voluntary negotiation.

Legal scholars who study eminent domain have noted the AI-specific acceleration: traditional infrastructure builds (highways, gas pipelines) unfolded over years with community input processes. Data center power infrastructure is being planned and executed at software-company timelines on utility-infrastructure rights-of-way.

The Policy Gap

Eminent domain for utility infrastructure is not new. What’s new is the demand profile driving it, and the accountability gap around whose interests are weighed.

When a power line is built for general grid reliability, eminent domain is used to serve a broad public interest. When a power line is built specifically to serve one or two large data center campuses, the public interest framing becomes harder to sustain — but the legal authority is the same. Courts have generally not distinguished between these use cases.

Maryland ratepayers are already facing a related version of the dispute: a FERC complaint has been filed over whether Virginia data center transmission costs should be allocated to Maryland customers who don’t benefit from the service.

The forced-sale cases in Georgia represent the end of the same distribution chain. The infrastructure cost gets allocated somewhere — whether to ratepayers, landowners, or the data center operators depends almost entirely on which legal mechanism the utility uses.

What Changes

The cases are creating pressure for legislative action in the affected states. Whether that takes the form of exemptions for AI-driven load, enhanced compensation requirements, or procedural changes to the eminent domain process is not yet clear.

Data center operators have generally stayed out of the public land dispute. The acquisition of the land happens several steps removed from their power purchase agreements. That distance is likely to narrow as the cases generate more coverage.

The Georgia family’s description — “it’s theft” — is legally inaccurate but politically durable.