As SpaceX Nears a Vermilion Parish Deal, Louisiana’s NDA Practice Faces New Scrutiny
LAFAYETTE, La. — Residents near Pecan Island have spent months trying to learn basic details about a rumored SpaceX facility in Vermilion Parish, only to run into the same wall over and over: the people who might know something are legally barred from saying so.
That wall is a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA, a legal contract that prohibits the person who signs it from sharing confidential information about a pending deal. State Rep. Jacob Landry, R-Erath, whose district borders the potential project site, signed one with Louisiana Economic Development in February. He is far from alone.
How Widespread Are NDAs in Louisiana Government?
The practice extends well beyond one legislator or one project. A joint investigation by Gulf States Newsroom and Type Investigations found at least 54 elected officials in Louisiana have signed NDAs tied to major industrial developments since Gov. Jeff Landry took office. That includes 77% of the state Senate and 13% of the House, along with leaders of both legislative chambers.
The projects covered by these agreements include the SpaceX interest in Vermilion Parish, Meta’s data center in Richland Parish, and Amazon and Applied Digital developments elsewhere in the state. The governor’s office has separately required more than 100 state employees to sign NDAs of its own, making it the second state agency under the current administration known to use them routinely.
The agreements are not always tied to industrial recruitment. Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has said he signed one to take part in discussions that turned out to involve the LIV Golf tournament, the Saudi-backed league that later received $7 million in state funding to host an event in Louisiana.
Southwest Louisiana has its own cluster of signers. State Sens. Jeremy Stine, Mark Abraham and Mike Reese, whose districts cover Calcasieu Parish and the surrounding area, have all signed NDAs with Louisiana Economic Development, KPLC reported earlier this year. Stine has defended the practice, arguing it gives legislators a seat at the table during negotiations that previously ran through the governor’s office alone. When asked whether his NDA had led to a specific project for the region, Stine said he could not point to one.
A Congresswoman’s Stock Trades After Signing an NDA
The clearest example of an NDA intersecting with personal financial stakes involves U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow. She signed a nondisclosure agreement with Laidley LLC, a Meta subsidiary, in June 2024, giving her access to confidential details about the company’s planned $50 billion data center in Richland Parish. WRKF obtained the agreement itself as part of its reporting on the trades.
Within months of signing, Letlow began buying Meta and Nvidia stock. She did not disclose those trades for more than a year, missing the 45-day window required under the STOCK Act, the federal law barring members of Congress from trading on nonpublic information gained through their official duties. Her trading continued even after the data center project became public, and she did not disclose her final Meta sale until more than a month after it happened.
A spokesperson for Letlow said the congresswoman did not direct any of the trades in question and was not aware they were being executed, and that the NDA played no role in her stock activity. Gov. Landry signed his own separate NDA with Meta two months before Letlow did.
Some Lawmakers Are Now Trying to Get Out
The scrutiny has prompted at least a handful of legislators to ask for their own agreements to be terminated. Republican state Sens. Bill Wheat, Valarie Hodges and Bob Hensgens have all requested LED cancel their NDAs, according to WBRZ, as has Democratic state Rep. Joy Walters after facing pushback from constituents over a data center project in her district. Hensgens has also said he turned down a separate NDA offer this year tied to the aerospace interest in his parish, after he had already confirmed the SpaceX talks publicly.
Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Rural Roots Louisiana have filed suit over the agreements, arguing that a $600 million incentive package built with state money should be subject to full public disclosure. Louisiana Economic Development has defended the practice as standard across the country, saying NDAs are a necessary part of negotiating with companies that could locate elsewhere.
How Louisiana’s Approach Compares to Other States
Other states are grappling with the same question, and how they’ve responded offers some context for where the fight in Louisiana could head next.
Michigan and California have already taken the more restrictive path. California has banned public officials from signing NDAs tied to economic development, and Michigan’s House passed a similar bill last year. Oklahoma lawmakers are having a nearly identical debate this year, after legal experts there concluded NDAs signed by public officials cannot override the state’s Open Records Act when it comes to public spending and official actions, Sooner Sentinel reported.
Wisconsin offers the closest historical parallel. Local officials there used NDAs to keep the $10 billion Foxconn deal largely out of public view in 2017, and a more recent investigation found at least four Wisconsin communities used similar agreements to shield newer data center projects from residents, in one case for more than a year, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service found. Florida, Michigan and New Jersey are now considering legislation specifically targeting data center NDAs.
Amazon’s search for a second headquarters in 2017 and 2018 remains the most nationally recognized example of the practice. The company required every finalist city to sign NDAs covering the information it shared, and several local governments went further, refusing to release even their own bids. That secrecy led to public-records lawsuits in Indianapolis, Chicago, Nashville and Louisville before the process concluded.
Supporters of the practice in every state make roughly the same argument Louisiana Economic Development makes: that companies weighing multiple locations expect confidentiality, and states that cannot offer it risk losing deals to states that can. Critics counter that an NDA limits what a lawmaker can share with the public without necessarily giving the state any real negotiating advantage in return, since the company still knows exactly what it has offered elsewhere even when the state’s own representatives do not.
Whether Louisiana follows Michigan and California toward restricting the practice, or continues on its current path, is likely to depend in part on what emerges from the pending lawsuits and from lawmakers who have already asked to be released from their own agreements.
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Here's a look at several of those projects that NDAs were covering...
