The small town of Edgerton, Kansas, population under 2,000, has filed a lawsuit against two of its own residents over a citizen petition to ban a proposed data center. The city argues the petition to classify data centers as an “industrial nuisance” is legally invalid and is asking a judge to block the ballot measure before voters ever get to see it.
Kimberly Twente and Carrie Schmidt, organizers of the nonprofit Public Trust Collective, gathered more than double the signatures required under the state constitution to put the question to Edgerton’s voters. The petition would classify large data centers as industrial nuisances that strain local water and power infrastructure and generate constant low frequency noise, and it was aimed squarely at a data center proposed by a Dubai based warehouse developer.
Why Is the City Suing Its Own Voters Instead of Holding the Vote?
Edgerton’s city council voted to sue rather than let the petition go to a ballot, arguing in court filings that the measure would function as a zoning restriction, which makes it an administrative matter rather than a legislative one, and therefore outside the citizen petition process. Twente and Schmidt see it differently. “If this goes through, this is what every other city attorney is going to do to silence the citizens,” Schmidt said.
A video of the city attorney serving the two women with lawsuit papers, first reported by FOX4 Kansas City, has since spread well beyond Johnson County.
Whatever a court eventually decides about whether this specific petition qualifies as legislative or administrative, the underlying dynamic is hard to miss: a small town used a lawsuit, not a debate, to keep a data center fight off the ballot. Full details on the filing are available from the Johnson County Post.
Update: The Lawsuit Was Served in Public
Video of the city attorney serving Twente and Schmidt with the lawsuit paperwork directly during a public city council meeting has since circulated widely online, adding to the perception that this is less an administrative dispute and more a direct confrontation between the city and the two women who organized the petition.
