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A utility company is asking a federal judge to stop a newspaper from telling the public what it already knows. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette should be allowed to publish every page it has on the deal between Entergy Arkansas and Google, and the fact that a court is even weighing the question is a problem.
Here is what happened. The Democrat-Gazette reported this week that Google will pay Entergy $526 million toward Cypress Solar, a $1.6 billion solar and battery plant in Jefferson County that will help power Google’s West Memphis data center. The newspaper also reported that Google will begin drawing power in February 2027 and could ramp up to a contract demand of 600 megawatts, and that the deal carries a termination fee of about $2 billion.
The newspaper did not steal those documents. A central Arkansas nurse named Jessica Kivell requested them from the Public Service Commission under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, and the commission gave them to her. That is how the law is supposed to work.
Entergy now says the commission released the records by mistake and that they contain trade secrets. Its lawyer sent letters demanding the newspaper destroy its copies. Then the company went to federal court and asked U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky to bar the Democrat-Gazette and the Arkansas Times from publishing any more of the details, and to force the outlets to scrub what they have already printed.
That is called prior restraint. It is the government stopping speech before it happens, and the U.S. Supreme Court has treated it as the most serious kind of First Amendment violation since it refused to block the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The Arkansas Advocate reported that Rudofsky heard three and a half hours of testimony Tuesday, much of it behind closed doors with reporters shut out of the courtroom, and did not rule.
Rudofsky said he began the hearing skeptical of Entergy’s request, then told the company’s lawyers he thought they had a strong case before adding that the First Amendment gave him significant pause. It should give him more than pause. If a government error in filling a records request is enough to justify silencing a newspaper, then every FOIA release in this state comes with an asterisk.
Consider what Entergy is actually arguing. Its own spokesperson said the published details showed Google is paying its full cost of service. If the documents make the company look good, it is hard to see what harm a federal court needs to prevent.
The public interest here is not abstract. According to the Democrat-Gazette’s reporting, Entergy residential customers began paying an extra $5.77 a month in June to help cover three new generation projects, and Cypress Solar is one of them. The commission’s own staff pressed questions about whether Google’s payments were structured so they would not reduce what ordinary customers pay.
Those are questions ratepayers deserve answered in public. Google’s parent company reported a $132 billion profit last year. Entergy’s parent reported $1.76 billion. Neither needs a judge to protect it from a newspaper.
I run a small news outlet in Baxter County. The Observer has spent years fighting for public records from cities, improvement districts and state agencies, and we have learned that the people who least want documents released are usually the people the documents are about. That is not a reason to keep them secret. It is the reason to publish.
I also know what a case like this does to outlets smaller than the Democrat-Gazette. A federal lawsuit from a utility with a $1.76 billion profit is not something a one- or two-person newsroom can absorb. If Entergy wins here, the next company with an embarrassing contract will not need to win in court. It will only need to file.
Data centers are coming to Arkansas, and they are coming with special rate contracts, confidentiality agreements and power demands that will shape electric bills for 20 years. Communities across the state are already pushing back over energy use and secrecy. The only way the public can judge these deals is if someone is allowed to report what is in them.
Entergy’s complaint is with the Public Service Commission, which released the records. It is not with a newspaper that did its job. Rudofsky should deny the request, and the rest of us should remember which company asked a federal court to decide what Arkansans are allowed to read.
