If you can think of an example of everyday people holding huge corporations accountable for harming the public, it was probably made possible in large part by a single legal theory: public nuisance.

Public nuisance was a primary basis for the litigation against Big Tobacco in the 1990s, and was the foundation of the opioid cases over the past decade. It’s played a prominent role in lawsuits on lead paint, predatory lending, water pollution, and “forever chemicals” like PFAS. It was the most important hook in recent successful cases against social media companies like Meta for designing their platforms to addict and endanger children. And most recently, it has been a key cause of action in litigation in several states against data centers for the air, water, and noise pollution they cause.

But not in Utah, Kansas, or Montana. Though it largely passed under the national radar, these states enacted laws this year or last that dismantle public nuisance as a cause of action—laws that, according to the Utah State Legislature’s own Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel, will make claims against data centers and other corporate wrongdoers “more difficult to pursue.” These states are not outliers, either—they’re forerunners. Their laws closely mirror a model bill published this summer by the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate oligarchy’s primary conduit for enacting right-wing laws at the state level. As I write this, ALEC’s Public Nuisance Reform Act is likely being distributed to Republican legislators in dozens of state houses around the country—and you can bet that Big Tech, eager to suppress a valuable tool of data center opponents, is lining up lobbyists to coax its passage.