The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a cryptocurrency company challenging a ban on data centers in Hawkins County, alleging the policy violates constitutional protections for property rights and equal treatment.
The complaint, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, was brought on behalf of ExoticRidge Crypto Company LLC.
The company claims county officials enacted a blanket prohibition on all data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations without regard to their individual impact, arguing that the ban improperly targeted a single industry while allowing other industrial uses to continue.
“A blanket ban on data centers and cryptocurrency mining that cause no harm is arbitrary and irrational,” the complaint states. “The selective enforcement of this ban—targeting a single industry while leaving others with larger public impacts unregulated—further underscores its discriminatory nature.”
According to the lawsuit, ExoticRidge planned to build a self-sufficient cryptocurrency mining facility that would generate its own electricity using ethane gas currently burned off as waste at an industrial site.
ExoticRidge alleges it had already made significant investments and obtained a state air permit before the Hawkins County Commission adopted the ban in September 2025.
The company states the project would not rely on public utilities or infrastructure.
ExoticRidge is asking the court to declare Hawkins County’s resolution banning cryptocurrency mining and data centers unconstitutional under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as provisions of the Tennessee Constitution.
The company is also seeking a declaration that the resolution violates Tennessee law and is therefore invalid and beyond the county’s authority.
Furthermore, the company is requesting a ruling that it had a vested right to operate its proposed Bitcoin mining facility and that the court block Hawkins County and its officials from enforcing the ban, or alternatively to prevent enforcement against ExoticRidge specifically.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “ExoticRidge Crypto Company” by Beacon Center Tennessee.
