7 AI policy moves you should know about — week of June 29, 2026
New Jersey's legislature sent three algorithmic accountability bills to the governor in a single day; California required school employees to be human; and data-center regulation pressure kept building at every level of government.
The last week of June and first days of July brought a burst of AI and automated-decision legislation. New Jersey's legislature moved with unusual speed — three algorithmic accountability bills cleared both chambers on June 30 in a single session day and were enrolled to Governor Sherrill within hours. California quietly closed one of the most concrete questions in AI deployment: can an AI system serve as a school employee? The answer is now definitively no. And from county boards in Iowa to city commissions in Indianapolis, data-center governance disputes kept generating binding regulatory action at every level of government.
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NEW LAW
1. California required all school employees and contractors who work directly with students to be human
California · Signed June 30, 2026; effective January 1, 2027Governor Newsom signed AB 2148 on June 30, 2026 — passing the Assembly 76-0 and the Senate 38-0 — requiring that individuals employed or contracted to provide direct services to public school students be natural persons, not AI systems or automated agents. The unanimous vote reflects a broad legislative consensus that student-facing school roles require human accountability. The law takes effect January 1, 2027 and applies to all California public school districts and charter schools.
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PROPOSED
2. New Jersey sent its algorithmic rent-pricing ban to the governor after both chambers cleared it on the same day
New Jersey · Enrolled to Governor Sherrill (Senate June 18; Assembly June 30, 2026)New Jersey's FAIR Act (A3497/S451) would prohibit landlords and property managers from using algorithmic rent-pricing software — programs that set or recommend rents using pooled non-public competitor pricing data, such as RealPage — to inflate apartment rents. The Senate cleared it June 18 and the Assembly on June 30, 2026; Governor Sherrill pledged in March 2026 to sign it. If signed, New Jersey would become the first state with a standalone statewide algorithmic rent-pricing ban enforced at the state level, joining the wave of city-level ordinances in Seattle, San Diego, Minneapolis, and Berkeley.
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PROPOSED
3. New Jersey banned grocery stores from setting prices based on customers' personal data — and froze electronic shelf labels for a year
New Jersey · Enrolled to Governor Sherrill (Senate 22-14; Assembly 51-20-1, June 30, 2026)New Jersey S3952/A3929, the Fair Pricing and Transparency Act, cleared the Senate 22-14 and the Assembly 51-20-1 on June 30, 2026 and was enrolled to Governor Sherrill. It would prohibit retail food stores from charging individualized prices based on a customer's personal data, purchasing history, or other surveillance-derived attributes, and imposes a one-year moratorium on electronic shelf label rollouts. If signed, New Jersey would be the third state to restrict surveillance-based grocery pricing, following Maryland and Connecticut.
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PROPOSED
4. New Jersey's Kids Code Act — requiring platforms to default privacy settings high for minors and ban manipulative design — headed to the governor
New Jersey · Enrolled to Governor Sherrill (Assembly 73-5-0, June 30, 2026)New Jersey A4015/S3413, the NJ Kids Code Act, cleared the Assembly 73-5-0 and the Senate on June 30, 2026 and was enrolled to Governor Sherrill. Modeled on the UK Children's Code and California's CAADCA, it would require online platforms to conduct data protection impact assessments before launching features accessible to minors, set privacy controls to their highest protective level by default, prohibit profiling children for commercial purposes without parental consent, and disclose how algorithms affect what content minors see. It is the third NJ algorithmic accountability bill sent to the governor on the same day.
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NEW LAW
5. Tennessee made large data centers pay their own electricity infrastructure costs instead of shifting them to all ratepayers
Tennessee · Signed May 7, 2026; effective July 1, 2026Tennessee HB 1847/SB 2128, signed by Governor Bill Lee on May 7, 2026 and effective July 1, 2026, requires data centers drawing 50 megawatts or more of electricity to bear their proportionate share of new or upgraded transmission and distribution infrastructure costs — preventing large hyperscale data centers from cross-subsidizing those costs onto residential and small-business ratepayers. The Tennessee Regulatory Authority is directed to adopt implementing rules. Tennessee joins a growing list of states grappling with how to allocate the grid-infrastructure costs of large AI data centers.
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MORATORIUM
6. Linn County, Iowa voted 2-1 for an 18-month moratorium on new large-scale data center rezoning requests
Linn County, Iowa · Effective July 1, 2026 — expires January 1, 2028The Linn County Board of Supervisors voted 2-1 on July 1, 2026 to impose an 18-month moratorium pausing all new EU-3 Large-Scale Data Center Zoning District rezoning applications in unincorporated Linn County, Iowa. The moratorium runs through January 1, 2028 and gives the county time to conduct a comprehensive planning review addressing data center siting, water use, energy consumption, and community impact. Linn County (home to Cedar Rapids) had created the EU-3 data center zone in February 2026; this moratorium pauses new rezoning requests under that framework while the county reconsiders its approach.
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PROPOSED
7. Indianapolis's Metropolitan Development Commission approved a data center special-zoning proposal — with decommissioning plans required
Indianapolis, Indiana · MDC 5-3 vote July 1, 2026; City-County Council vote pending (~August 2026)The Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission voted 5-3 on July 1, 2026 to advance a data center special-zoning-district ordinance to the full City-County Council. Standards include noise limits (set at 65 dB after the MDC voted 5-3 to reject a stricter 55 dB proposal), water management plans, annual reporting on water use and power consumption, and — after a motion to remove it failed 6-2 — mandatory decommissioning and environmental-remediation plans. The City-County Council is expected to vote in August 2026; the ordinance would be among the most comprehensive local data-center zoning frameworks in the Midwest.
New Jersey's June 30 legislative sprint — three algorithmic accountability bills in one session day — is the clearest signal yet that state legislatures are treating algorithmic rent-setting, surveillance pricing, and children's online safety as a package rather than isolated issues. Tennessee's ratepayer protection law, which took effect July 1, attacks the same cluster of concerns from a different angle: not what data centers do with information, but what they cost the public. The Linn County and Indianapolis votes reinforce a pattern that has now appeared in dozens of jurisdictions: communities want to set the terms before the concrete is poured, not after. We expect the NJ governor's signatures (or vetoes) to land by early September; we'll update all three entries as soon as they do.