A federal judge in Arkansas on Wednesday denied an energy company’s request to temporarily block the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from publishing additional details of confidential documents obtained by the newspaper about the company’s involvement in the construction of a $4 billion power facility. google The company has a data center in the state, court filings revealed.
company, entergy arkansas, It also asked Judge Lee Rudofsky to order information in an article about the documents published Monday to be removed from the Democrat-Gazette’s website.
“I think you have a strong case,” Rudofsky told Entergy’s lawyers during a hearing Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, the El Dorado News Times reported. “But the First Amendment allows us to stop here.”
The judge said, “It will take a considerable amount of time to place him in pre-detention,” the News Times reported.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation noted that “the Supreme Court has made clear time and time again that prior restraints that prohibit news organizations from publishing certain stories” “can be justified only in the most extreme circumstances.”
In his order Wednesday, Rudofsky denied Entergy’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Democrat-Gazette and other defendants. He plans to schedule a briefing at a later date regarding Entergy’s request for a preliminary injunction in the case, according to court filings.
The Arkansas Times, a media outlet that is a defendant in the case, reported that Rudofsky said during Wednesday’s hearing that the case involves issues of “significant public interest.”
“Special agreements between utility companies and large data centers could potentially, or at least potentially, affect the entire state in both very positive and potentially negative ways,” the judge said, according to the Times.
He also said that Entergy is a public utility that could be considered a monopoly, and that “the details of its business arrangements, especially with large users of power, such as Google, are something the average Arkansas citizen would want to be familiar with.”
CNBC has reached out to Entergy for comment on the order.
“This case is first and foremost, and in its entirety, about the First Amendment. Our duty as a news organization, and the duty of all news organizations, is to inform the public as fully as possible about issues of public interest,” Democrat-Gazette Editor-in-Chief Lee Wolverton said in a statement Wednesday.
“Any attempt to use the courts to thwart the press’ efforts to impose prior restrictions on its First Amendment rights constitutes an attack on the very freedoms that define our country,” Wolverton said. “I can’t stand that.”
Entergy said in a court filing Tuesday that documents containing “trade secrets” and “highly classified information” were “erroneously disclosed” to Jessica Kivell, a woman who was required to turn over the documents under the state’s Freedom of Information Act by the Arkansas Public Service Commission.
Mr. Kivell then gave the document to a reporter for the Democrat-Gazette. The paper ran an article Monday with the headline, “Google to pay Entergy Arkansas $526 million for solar farm to power West Memphis data center.”
The $526 million payment will cover about one-third of the $1.6 billion price tag for “the facility known as Cypress Solar,” wrote Sidney Sasser. The facility is a 600-megawatt solar farm and a 350-megawatt battery storage facility that will “power the grid that Google’s West Memphis data center supplies at scale.”
Sasser noted that the state’s Public Service Commission approved a special pricing agreement between Google and Entergy in December, but the details have been “largely kept secret.”
“In June, Entergy residential customers began paying an additional $5.77 per month to cover three new generation projects, one of which is Cypress Solar,” Sasser wrote.
In a civil suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, Entergy Arkansas asked Rudofsky to issue a temporary restraining order barring the Democrat-Gazette, Sasser, Kivell and a second newspaper, the Arkansas Times and its editor-in-chief, from further disclosing what it says are trade secrets disclosed by the Civil Service Commission. The Times reported that neither the paper nor its editor-in-chief, Byron Tate, have possession of the disputed documents.
Entergy also asked Rudofsky to order the Democrat-Gazette and other defendants to remove disclosures from documents that have “already been made” from their websites.
In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday after Rudofsky ruled against Entergy, Tate said he was “grateful that the freedom of the press and the public’s right to know has been won.”
Rudofsky, a former assistant general counsel for Walmart whom President Donald Trump appointed to the U.S. District Court in 2019, was nominated by the president in August to a seat on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a statement to CNBC ahead of Rudofsky’s Wednesday ruling, Entergy said, “Entergy Arkansas takes customer privacy seriously, because it’s the right thing to do and it’s required by law.”
“We protect all of our customer information, whether it’s for households, local manufacturers, or global businesses. And yesterday’s publication of incomplete confidential details of Google’s power contracts in the media violates laws protecting confidential business information and makes it difficult to attract new companies to the state, given the uncertainty about how sensitive business information will be handled appropriately,” the company said.
“Despite the inappropriate disclosure, the article makes one fact clear: Google’s addition to the Arkansas power grid is a major benefit for all customers,” Entergy said. “Google pays the full cost of the service and is fully funding the grid upgrades required for the project through a combination of upfront payments and monthly service fees. This will reduce future bills to existing customers by more than $1.1 billion over the next 20 years.”
“Google is committed to covering 100% of the power and infrastructure costs for the West Memphis data center,” a Google spokesperson, who is not a party to Entergy’s civil lawsuit, said in a statement.
“The total upfront payment is $526 million, but the ongoing monthly payments over the 20-year term of the agreement fully fund our operations,” the spokesperson said. “Entergy’s regulatory filings show that this project will indeed reduce system-wide costs and provide more than $1.1 billion in net benefits to Arkansans.”
