A Louisiana Public Service Commission administrative law judge declined to reconsider her own ruling ordering Meta to hand over data on its data center's costs and power needs, instead referring the matter to the Commission's five commissioners for review.
Judge Melanie Verzwyvelt's decision could shape how much the public ever learns about the true cost and payoff of the state's biggest industrial buildout, while also setting a precedent for other, future projects.
In a four-page order issued Friday (July 31), Verzwyvelt wrote that she "declines to reconsider the interlocutory ruling" she issued July 10, and instead "refers to the Commissioners for immediate review" that ruling — meaning the fight over Meta's records moves to the full Commission rather than being resolved at the administrative law level.
The Commission itself has the authority to compel Meta to turn over the disputed records regardless of what happens with Verzwyvelt's subpoena — and has the ability to make that decision at its Aug. 12 meeting, the earliest date the matter can come before the full board.
The stay Meta already won, which keeps the subpoena on hold, remains in effect while that review plays out. Verzwyvelt's order does not address the separate dispute over "attorneys' eyes only" access that also came up at Wednesday's hearing, leaving that question for a later ruling.
The hearing contained several hours of oral arguments in Baton Rouge Wednesday (July 29) and centered on three motions filed by Meta: a motion to quash a subpoena for its own economic and power-demand data, a motion asking the full five-member Commission to immediately review and reverse the judge's prior ruling, and a motion to stay that ruling.
How it got here
Entergy Louisiana is asking the Commission to approve more than 5,200 megawatts of new generation and transmission to serve Evest LLC, a Meta subsidiary building what would be one of the largest data centers in the country — a campus that has grown from roughly 2,600 megawatts of planned capacity to as much as 7.5 gigawatts, according to figures cited at the hearing.
The Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists, the case's most active intervenors, subpoenaed Meta on June 30 for records substantiating its projected investment, job creation and electricity needs, arguing Entergy's application relies on Meta's numbers without ever showing how they were calculated.
Those figures matter beyond the docket itself: the cost of the generation, transmission and gas plants built to serve the data center — and how much of it Meta actually needs — feeds directly into what ends up on ordinary Louisianans' utility bills, since ratepayers can be on the hook for infrastructure costs tied to a single large customer.
On July 10, Verzwyvelt granted that subpoena in part, ordering Meta to produce documents on investment and job creation and its load calculations by July 20.
Meta, appearing as a non-party, argued in its filings that the ordered categories amount to proprietary trade secrets whose disclosure "will cause irreparable injury" given "the highly competitive and rapidly growing artificial intelligence economic sector," and asked the Commission to reverse the ruling outright or, failing that, to stay it while that review proceeds.
The arguments
At Wednesday’s hearing, Weston Adams III of Nelson Mullins, Meta's outside counsel, argued the information being sought is proprietary and that intervenors already have ample means — cross-examination, briefing, discovery from Entergy itself — to test whether the utility has met its burden of proof, without forcing a non-party customer (Meta) into the record.
Susan Miller of Earthjustice, representing the advocacy groups, countered that Entergy has effectively conceded it "just took" Meta's numbers at face value, leaving ratepayers unable to judge whether the 10 gas plants proposed specifically to power Hyperion, Meta’s $50 billion data center in Richland Parish, are actually justified.
"It may well be that only two are justified," Miller said in an interview after the hearing, but without the underlying load calculations, she said, "there's no way to question" that number.
The AEO fight
A second, related dispute over an "attorney's eyes only" — or AEO — confidentiality tier also drew sharp questioning.
AEO restricts certain information to attorneys and expert witnesses who sign nondisclosure agreements only, cutting out client representatives, including at the Alliance for Affordable Energy and Union of Concerned Scientists.
Skylar Rosenbloom, Entergy's lawyer, said the AEO designation exists to guard against disclosure of Meta's most sensitive information. Meta’s lawyers said the designation is “routinely used” and “an established pattern across the Southeast.”
Miller said her side didn't learn which of its own people were excluded until it went digging through discovery in early June, and noted the judge had already ruled in a prior, related docket that Meta's public-facing work was not grounds to exclude the nonprofits' representatives.
Verzwyvelt, who said her own legal research had turned up few precedents for AEO designations in utility rate cases, indicated during the hearing she was inclined to grant the nonprofits' request for broader access, though she took the matter under advisement along with everything else.
Setting precedent
District 3 Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, who attended the hearing, said the stakes go well beyond this one docket.
Louisiana has handled large industrial loads before, he said, but never one of this scale for a single customer — and whatever rules emerge here are likely to be invoked by the next data center developer, and the one after that.
"If Meta got Y, I want Y," Lewis said, describing how he expects other companies to point back to whatever standard the Commission sets. He called the case "world-historic" and said the risks of the current buildout may not be evident for 10 or 15 years.
Both of Meta's motions — to reverse the subpoena ruling outright, and to stay it in the meantime — are now headed to that full five-member Commission, with the Aug. 12 meeting set as the earliest point at which commissioners can take up the matter and decide whether Meta must comply.
Verzwyvelt's referral effectively confirms that path: the subpoena dispute now sits with the commissioners themselves, who will decide whether Meta must turn over the investment, job-creation and load data the NPOs are seeking, or whether Verzwyvelt's July 10 ruling gets reversed before it ever takes effect. The AEO question — and Meta's separate bid to quash the subpoena outright — remain pending before Verzwyvelt.
This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.
