Hexa Data Center, Williamstown, New Jersey

Hexa Builders is suing Monroe Township in Gloucester County, New Jersey, for $300 million after the township banned data centers and its planning board turned down Hexa's application for a 1 million-square-foot data center and a warehouse at 3043 Black Horse Pike in Williamstown. The Hexa data center case is now in federal court in Camden, where the township asked in late July 2026 for it to be dismissed.

Hexa, a Princeton-based developer led by CEO Dipal Patel, bought about 170 acres of farmland on Black Horse Pike for $5 million in 2022, under a township redevelopment plan for warehouses and distribution. In early 2025 the township amended that plan to allow data centers. Hexa planned two warehouses, one of about 522,000 square feet and one of about 1.1 million, and intended to convert the larger one into a data center.

Residents objected to the water, pollution and noise a data center could bring, and a January 2026 planning board meeting ran more than four hours, though the board still granted a preliminary site plan for the warehouse project. "We are here as elected officials this evening, saying that we're going to do everything in our power to stop all data centers from coming here," Mayor Gregory Wolfe said at a March 25 meeting, according to Hexa's lawsuit.

On April 22 the township passed two ordinances, one banning data centers and one repealing the 2025 change, and in May the planning board deemed Hexa's amended application incomplete. Williamstown resident John Romano, who said the data center would be right in his backyard, told the planning board in July: "This has got my wife and I really concerned."

Hexa's 20-count suit, filed June 5, says the ban is arbitrary and violates the 14th Amendment and the First Amendment, arguing that "data centers are a medium of expression" and that banning them burdens free speech rights. Rutgers law professor Ronald Chen called the free-speech argument a long shot: "The data center is not speaking. It's not generating content." The township's attorney, Todd Gelfand, wrote that the ban does not regulate the content of speech, a speaker, a message, or Hexa's ability to engage in expressive activity. Hexa's lawyer, Jim Maley, has asked for the state-law claims to go back to New Jersey court.

Other South Jersey towns have moved the same way: Medford banned data centers in June, Millville banned large-scale ones in May, and Collingswood banned data centers and small computing nodes in August, while Cherry Hill was considering a ban. In Vineland, a large data center is due to be finished by the end of the year.

What happens next is up to U.S. District Judge Edward Kiel, who has yet to rule on the township's request to dismiss the case or Hexa's request to send part of it back to state court. The ban stays in force meanwhile, and Monroe's mayor and council say they will defend it.