Trump killed the Digital Equity Act, but US was forced to bring part of it back - Ars Technica
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The Trump administration said it will reinstate a broadband grant program to comply with a court ruling that prevented it from fully ignoring the Digital Equity Act enacted by Congress in 2021. The US government said in a court filing that it plans to start taking applications for grants in December.
However, the Trump administration won a partial victory because the judge ruled the government can’t allocate money based on the race or ethnicity of people who would benefit from grants. The government program can still award broadband grants based on factors such as income, age, and disability.
The Digital Equity Act of 2021 provided $2.75 billion for three grant programs aimed at closing gaps in broadband access. The Biden administration started awarding $60 million in planning grants to states in 2022, and in 2024 it started taking applications to distribute the rest of the $2.75 billion. Trump announced in May 2025 that he would end the grant programs, claiming the Digital Equity Act itself is racist and unconstitutional.
Trump and federal government officials were sued in US District Court for the District of Columbia by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), an advocacy group that was in line to obtain $25.7 million in grant money before the Trump administration ended the program. The NDIA lawsuit is specifically about the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program, which accounts for $1.25 billion of the total authorized by the Digital Equity Act.
A separate grant program for states and territories accounted for the other $1.44 billion, but there’s no indication that it will be restarted. It doesn’t appear that anyone sued the Trump administration over the discontinued state grants.
“Massive win,” but also a loss
The NDIA called the revival of the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program “a massive win for the communities we serve,” though it would have to submit a new application for funding because the Trump administration is starting the process from scratch. In January 2025, the Biden administration selected the NDIA for a $25.7 million grant to provide low- and no-cost devices and assist people in accessing low-cost broadband. The Trump administration later terminated the grant, the NDIA lawsuit said.
The Trump administration confirmed in a joint status report yesterday that it will reinstate the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program, but without the provision that uses race and ethnicity as criteria for awarding funds. The status report did not mention restoring the $1.44 billion program for states, which was not part of the lawsuit filed by the NDIA.
“The Digital Equity Act is the first major federal investment to acknowledge that true connectivity requires more than just laying fiber-optic cables,” the NDIA said. “It takes digital navigators, affordable devices, and localized digital skills training to ensure that historically underserved communities can fully participate in our modern economy. The Competitive Grant Program is designed to directly fund these community-level solutions.”
The NDIA is, of course, not happy about the judge’s decision that grants cannot be targeted to racial and ethnic minorities. “Regrettably, however, the court’s ruling also severed the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities as a specific covered population in the program on the grounds that it is unconstitutional,” the NDIA said. “NDIA maintains unequivocally that the Digital Equity Act is constitutional in its entirety, and that the administration’s aggressive actions to dismantle it are unjust.”
Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled last month that “the Digital Equity Act straightforwardly categorizes members of certain races as ‘covered’ by the Act and targets grant money to programs that benefit those groups. That is an explicit racial classification, which can only be upheld if it withstands strict scrutiny. Here, it does not: the offending provision is neither justified by a compelling governmental interest nor narrowly tailored to meet a permissible goal. Accordingly, it is unconstitutional.”
Trump killed whole program over “singular” provision
Bates did not overturn the whole law, saying “the offending provision is severable from the rest of the statute” and that “the government’s only objection to the Digital Equity Act is this singular unconstitutional provision.” Although Trump had ordered an end to the whole program, the government...