NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE: COURT RULING ON DIGITAL EQUITY ACT CONTINUES JUDICIAL ASSAULT ON RACIAL JUSTICE
NEW YORK (July 17, 2026) — National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial issued the following statement in response to a U.S. district court ruling on the Digital Equity Act:
“Today’s ruling is a troubling addition to a growing line of decisions that acknowledge the existence of racial inequality while stripping government of the tools needed to address it. The decision to remove race and ethnicity from the Digital Equity Act repeats a dangerous judicial fiction: that recognizing a racial disparity is itself a form of racial discrimination.
"Generations of residential segregation, discriminatory lending, unequal infrastructure investment, employment exclusion, and disinvestment have created unequal access to affordable broadband, appropriate devices, digital skills, and the economic opportunities that flow from them.
"A policy that responds to a documented racial disparity is not the moral or constitutional equivalent of the discrimination that produced that disparity.
"The same distorted notion of “colorblindness” that misinformed the U.S Supreme Court’s decision to weaken protections against racial vote dilution in Louisiana v. Callais and dismantle race-conscious admissions programs in Students for Fair Admissions is being used to weaken a congressional effort to close measurable gaps in digital access and opportunity.
"These, along with challenges to federal programs supporting businesses and communities that have faced documented discrimination, add to an untenable legal framework in which racial inequality may be observed, measured, and even lamented, but government is increasingly forbidden from acting directly to correct it.
"Courts demand evidence of discrimination, then discount that evidence as too general. They insist that remedies be narrowly tailored, then eliminate the very criteria that allow programs to reach the people that need them. They invoke Congress’s failure to create perfect solutions to prevent it from creating any solutions at all.
"The National Urban League rejects the false choice between equal treatment and an honest response to racial inequality. True equality requires confronting the conditions that keep opportunity out of reach. It requires lawmakers to understand history, follow the evidence, and design remedies that are equal to the scale of the harm.
"We call on the administration to restore the Competitive Grant Program immediately and distribute the funds Congress authorized. We also call on Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to enforce the guarantees of the Reconstruction Amendments and to enact effective remedies for racial disparities in voting, education, economic opportunity, technology, and every other area of American life.