Cutting race considerations from the Digital Equity Act undermines its aim

The United States is a global technology leader, yet millions of Americans lack the internet access, devices, or skills to benefit from its technological capabilities or participate fully in the digital economy. Recognizing this divide in 2021, Congress passed the largest federal investment in broadband in U.S. history, encompassing both the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment Program and the Digital Equity Act. Together, these measures aim to expand broadband access and infrastructure while ensuring that people have the skills and resources needed to adopt and use these technologies. But the two have come under increased scrutiny during the second Trump administration, which in May 2025 moved to terminate the Digital Equity Act’s grant programs, arguing that the programs’ consideration of certain historically “underserved” ethnic and racial groups was unconstitutional. As a result, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance filed a lawsuit seeking to restore the program. During litigation, government attorneys argued that the program should only be allowed to continue if the act’s race-related provisions were removed from the statute. And on July 15, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed, claiming that the statute’s racial provisions were unconstitutional and should be severed from the act as a whole. But race cannot and should not be ignored in digital access conversations, and the courts’ striking of racial provisions undermines the act’s recognition of key barriers to broadband access and reasons for digital exclusion among racial and ethnic groups.

[August 25, 2026]