Thor Equities has filed a lawsuit against a city that passed a data center moratorium, after it had already announced plans for a facility and invested millions.The data center developer said that it had spent $19.6 million of its own funds on preliminary work for a facility in Urbana, western Ohio.The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio against the city, the city council, and the building and zoning appeals board.Urbana passed a 12-month "emergency moratorium" in March, and this month rezoned the land owned by Thor as unsuitable for data centers.Thor said that it worked with city officials for more than a year, assembled approximately 230 acres, and submitted a complete site plan in February 2026 for a $1 billion project."Then, after we submitted our formal application following all the rules in place at the time, the City Council suddenly changed direction," global COO Melissa Gliatta said in a statement on its project website."Our plans were rejected on grounds that don't match the city's own zoning code, and the council passed an emergency moratorium to pause data centers."Gliatta added: "A city council gave unanimous approval to allow data centers and a company responded by committing millions."The project was expected to be a 460,000 sq ft (42,735 sqm) facility, use closed-loop cooling, and see the end user pay for all necessary grid and transmission upgrades.Thor said that the moratorium was passed amid an environment of "wildly exaggerated claims about water usage, noise levels, and dangerous, baseless propaganda about health impacts that have no grounding in reality."Thor said that it "looks forward to resolving this matter fairly so it can continue being a strong partner for Urbana."