A Louisiana state senator helped secure Meta’s largest datacenter. Then he sold the land beside it | Louisiana

This story is from Floodlight, a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action

For more than two years, John “Jay” Morris, a Louisiana state senator, helped pave the way for Meta to build one of the world’s largest datacenters, called Hyperion, in Richland Parish.

The Republican attorney lobbied a utility regulator for a key approval. He cosponsored two bills that enabled the land deal between Meta and the state. And he voted “yea” on two additional bills that provided the trillion-dollar tech company with tax breaks worth an estimated $3.3bn.

Now, a Floodlight investigation has found that while Morris used his political position to advance the project, he and his business partners were buying and selling the land around it over the past 15 months.

As recently as February, Morris and his partners sold hundreds of acres to utility giant Entergy for a methane-burning power plant to provide electricity for the datacenter.

Morris’s recent land deals haven’t been disclosed until now, according to Floodlight’s review of legislative filings, votes, media coverage and state senate records. It’s unclear how much money he has made from these transactions – Louisiana law does not require buyers and sellers to publicly disclose sale prices.

Experts said the senator’s actions raise a serious issue of a possible violation of state ethics laws – such as La RS 42:1112(A), 42:1120 and 42:1101 – which prohibit government officials from participating in official actions that benefit them financially, require them to recuse themselves from voting when a conflict exists and prohibit the use of public office for private gain.

“What makes it particularly egregious is not one isolated vote, but a sustained pattern: creating legal authority for a specific land deal, backing a huge tax break, lobbying a regulator, quietly positioning personal real estate around the project,” said Dane Ciolino, a professor and expert in governmental ethics at Loyola University New Orleans.

In an interview, Morris denied wrongdoing. He said his land-holdings are public record and that the tax breaks he voted for applied to all datacenters – not just the Meta project.

“ It makes a nice story if you can try to show that I have some sort of conflict,” Morris said. “But under Louisiana’s ethics laws, I don’t.”

After years of maintaining a relatively low profile in the legislature, Morris has become a prominent political figure since Governor Jeff Landry took office. He’s chair of a judiciary committee, a member of three financial committees and joined the powerful state bond commission in 2024.

He’s also recently become a lightning rod for controversy at the statehouse after authoring bills that would eliminate Louisiana’s majority-Black congressional districts and another that took away the seat of a Black court clerk who had just been elected in New Orleans.