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Entergy Arkansas has dropped the federal lawsuit it filed to stop the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from reporting on its power deal with Google, ending a two-week fight that drew condemnation from press freedom groups and a rebuke from the chairman of the Legislature’s energy committee.
The utility filed a one-page notice of dismissal Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Little Rock. The filing, signed by attorneys Stephen Lancaster and Gary Marts of Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, dismisses the case without prejudice, which means Entergy could refile it. No defendant had filed an answer or a motion in the case.
The notice ends Entergy’s claims against the Democrat-Gazette, reporter Sydney Sasser, the Arkansas Times, Byron Tate and Jessica Kivell, the central Arkansas nurse whose public records request set the dispute in motion.
The retreat comes two weeks to the day after U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky refused to grant the temporary restraining order Entergy wanted. It also comes one day after Sen. Mark Johnson, R-Ferndale, told Entergy executives from the dais that he had never seen anything like the lawsuit in his time at the Capitol.
The dispute began with a records request. Kivell asked the Arkansas Public Service Commission under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act for details of Entergy’s arrangement with Google, which is building a $4 billion data center on 1,100 acres outside West Memphis. The commission released the documents, later said it had done so by mistake, and Kivell passed them to the Democrat-Gazette.
The newspaper had been chasing the same records for months. In July, a Pulaski County circuit judge threw out the Democrat-Gazette’s records lawsuit against the commission, ruling the court was the wrong venue and that the commission itself had to decide whether the documents were public.
On Aug. 31, the Democrat-Gazette reported that Google’s contract called for a $526 million payment toward Cypress Solar, the $1.6 billion solar and battery plant Entergy is building in Jefferson County to serve the data center. The newspaper also reported that Google would begin drawing power in February 2027, ramp up to 600 megawatts by October 2029 and face a termination fee of about $2 billion if it walked away, with parent company Alphabet guaranteeing the payment.
Entergy sued the next day. Its complaint, verified by David Palmer, the utility’s vice president of regulatory affairs, argued the documents were trade secrets and asked Rudofsky to bar the Democrat-Gazette and the Arkansas Times from publishing more details and to force them to remove what was already in print. The Arkansas Times said it never had the documents.
Rudofsky heard about three and a half hours of testimony Sept. 1, much of it with reporters shut out of the courtroom. He denied the restraining order the next day, telling lawyers it would take a great deal to persuade him to impose a prior restraint on the press. The Democrat-Gazette reported that he also said Kivell had broken no law.
A prior restraint is a court order stopping speech before it happens. The U.S. Supreme Court has treated it as the most serious kind of First Amendment violation since 1971, when it refused to block The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers.
Hours after losing, Entergy posted a statement accusing the newspaper of “a serious and careless mathematical error” and demanding a retraction. The utility said the $526 million figure covered only Google’s $443 million upfront payment plus one year of $83 million minimum demand payments, and that the full 20-year total would be about $2.1 billion.
“Nobody pays their bill just once every 20 years,” Palmer said, according to the Arkansas Times.
The Democrat-Gazette answered that the figures came straight from the documents and that Entergy’s new numbers had not been backed up by anything in the record. Google, for its part, said the contract’s own analysis projected $1.1 billion in net benefits for other Entergy customers, though the analysis remains sealed.
The day after the ruling, Entergy said it would not seek a preliminary injunction. But the lawsuit stayed open, and as the Arkansas Advocate noted, it left the utility room to pursue damages against the newspaper and Kivell. That possibility ended with Wednesday’s filing.
Entergy spokesperson Lamor Williams told the Advocate that asking the court to protect confidential customer information was “an unfortunate, but necessary step” because the utility is required by law to protect it.
Democrat-Gazette Executive Editor Lee Wolverton told the Advocate that “the primacy of the First Amendment held true” and that the newspaper would not relent in its pursuit of the facts. Arkansas Times Editor Austin Gelder said the outcome showed that “running to the courts won’t save anyone from the truth.”
Seth Stern, advocacy chief at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said Entergy’s lawyers almost certainly knew the case was meritless when they filed it, given how far the Supreme Court has gone in rejecting prior restraints.
The Arkansas Times reported that Marts emailed Rudofsky’s clerk to flag the dismissal. He wrote that he would not normally notify chambers of a voluntary dismissal but did so because of the attention the judge had given the case over the past few weeks.
The dismissal also landed a day after the Joint Energy Committee brought Entergy and Google in for questioning. Johnson, the committee’s co-chairman, opened by saying he was “disappointed to see Entergy suing in federal court over a First Amendment issue,” calling the lawsuit unprecedented.
Palmer told lawmakers the utility had been trying to protect confidential information that would never have become public without the inadvertent release, the Democrat-Gazette reported.
Then Johnson pulled out his own Entergy bill. The Advocate reported it carried an added $22.81 from a rider the commission approved this year under the Generating Arkansas Jobs Act of 2025, which lets utilities bill customers for new power plants before the plants are finished.
The rider charges just over half a cent per kilowatt-hour and funds three Entergy projects: Cypress Solar, the Ironwood Power Station in Hot Spring County and the Jefferson Power Station at the White Bluff site in Jefferson County. None is complete. For a typical residential customer, the Democrat-Gazette reported in June, the charge added $5.77 a month.
Entergy Arkansas customers in Baxter, Marion and Boone counties have been paying that rider since June, the same as customers in Little Rock.
Johnson said constituents have told him the arrangement looks like a shell game. He asked why the traditional model, in which a regulated utility fronts its own construction costs in exchange for a guaranteed return set by the commission, suddenly would not work.
John Bethel, Entergy’s director of public affairs, said the rider does not change what customers ultimately pay. “It’s the same cost, but it’s a timing difference,” Bethel said, arguing that collecting early saves customers financing costs over the life of the plant.
Sen. Matt McKee pressed further. He asked why ratepayers were still covering Cypress Solar through the rider when Entergy’s “Fair Share Plus” pledge promises that data centers pay their full share and then some.
Palmer said the plant had to be started in time to meet Google’s schedule and to capture federal tax credits, and that Google will not start paying its contract rates until its own buildout is done.
That timing gap is the heart of the matter. Ratepayers began paying in June. Google pays nothing until February 2027 and does not reach full load until late 2029, and the Democrat-Gazette reported Monday that Google’s $2.1 billion in payments is not specifically earmarked for Cypress Solar at all.
The distinction matters because of how utilities make money. Cash a customer pays up front toward a plant, known as a contribution in aid of construction, is subtracted from the utility’s rate base, so other customers pay less. The Democrat-Gazette reported that the contract did not describe Google’s $526 million that way, which keeps the full $1.6 billion in the rate base where Entergy earns its regulated return.
Commission staff flagged the same issue last fall. In notes prepared for a Nov. 17 hearing that was mostly closed to the public, staff asked why Entergy had said Google “will pay rates that cover the cost of this resource” when the contract suggested Google was paying well below that cost. Entergy’s answer is not public, since 24 of the 80 pages in the commission’s order approving the deal were redacted, along with every page of the contract itself.
What Entergy and Google argue now is different from what they promised last October. The claim today is that Google’s 20 years of payments will lower overall system costs and produce $1.1 billion in net benefits for other customers. That can be true even as bills rise, since a large customer spreads a utility’s fixed costs across more electricity sold, but the benefit arrives over two decades and the assumptions behind the $1.1 billion figure remain sealed.
The lawsuit is over. The questions it was filed to keep out of print are now being asked from the Legislature’s dais, and the Democrat-Gazette has said it will ask the Public Service Commission to make public how much Google is paying toward Cypress Solar and what protections the deal includes for retail ratepayers.
