Tag Archives: Digital Equity Competitive Grant program

Are Digital Equity Grants Back

There seems to be an increasing chance that the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program is back in play. In a status report filed by the Department of Commerce in the lawsuit where NDIA filed to reinstate the grant program, the government said it is targeting a December 2026 opening date for applications for the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program. Like everything associated with BEAD and the Digital Equity Grant programs, nothing is final until this is put in place. We’ve seen NTIA slow-roll the grant process at every turn.

As a reminder, the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program will be administered and the grants awarded directly by NTIA. The budget for this grant program is $1.25 billion, which was set by legislation to be $250 million per year for the years 2022 through 2026. 5% of the total funding is reserved for Native Entities, and 1% is set aside for territories. The original IIJA legislation had also included $1.44 billion to go to the State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program. The stated goal of this grant program is to promote the achievement of digital equity, support digital inclusion activities, and build capacity for efforts by States relating to the adoption of broadband.

NTIA had launched the Competitive Grant Program in 2024, with $750 million in grants. There were roughly 700 applicants to the program, and near the end of 2024 NTIA announced a number of award winners. This included a $7.7 million grant to Land of Sky Regional Council for my region of western North Carolina. The administration canceled both programs in May 2024. They said the grants were illegal since they included race as one of the categories to consider when using the grant funding.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance sued the administration over the cancellation, and there were negotiations between the two sides and the Court that led to this reinstatement of the Competitive Grant Program. The reconstituted grants will remove all reference to race as part of the use of the grants.

Assuming that NTIA meets the December date to open the grant window, it seems almost certain that every application to the grants will have to be refiled. But hopefully, the full $1.25 billion of funding would be open for applicants.

NTIA said it is currently preparing a new Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the coming rounds of grants. This is the document that defines the application process for the grants. If the experience of the big changes made to the BEAD grant program is any indication, there could be big changes. NTIA completely rewrote the BEAD grant program with the Benefit of the Bargain rules, and it won’t shock anybody if the rules for the Competitive Grant Program change as well.

There has been no word out of NTIA about releasing the State Digital Equity Capacity Grant funding to States. It would seem logical that as long as the same changes are made to remove reference to race, these grants could be released. But there has been nothing logical about the entire pile of funding that came from the IIJA.

There is still a big question about whether the funding for both programs is included in the 2027 federal budget? As is typical with Congress, budget bills are being punted down the road, and there is no telling when there will be an actual budget for Commerce. The Administration recommended killing this funding for 2027, and we’ll have to wait and see what comes out of the budget process. It’s conceivable that the grants will be killed through the backdoor of the budget process, which would undo anything Commerce is agreeing to now.

At least half of this mess is due to the slowness of NTIA since 2020. The funding for these grants was supposed to start flowing in 2022, and the first grant applications were submitted in September 2024. Half of this money should have already been awarded and in use before the programs were canceled in 2025. I’ve never heard any good story why NTIA took so long to launch a fairly straightforward grant program.

Digital Equity Grants Inch Forward

You may read headlines that lead you to believe that the courts have restored the Digital Equity Act as a result of a lawsuit by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA). The ruling from Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is a lot more complicated than that.

If you’re brave enough to venture into the court order, you’re going to quickly figure out that, unless you are a constitutional lawyer, you aren’t going to understand a lot of the background and discussion inside the order. If you want a plain English summary of the order, I direct you to the excellent summary from the Benton Institute – and even that is challenging to read in places for those not used to reading court orders. Rather than rehash everything in the order, which was done well by Benton, I’m going to cut to the conclusions of the case and talk about what this might mean for those still hoping to get digital inclusion grants.

What did the Court order? The Administration killed the $2.75 billion grant programs that were part of the Digital Equity Act. This suit specifically challenged the termination of the Digital Equity Competitive Grant program, where NTIA made direct grant awards for digital inclusion activities. This suit did not address the Digital Equity Capacity Grant program, where State Broadband Offices were slated to make digital inclusion grant awards.

The Court did not yet order the NTIA to continue with the Competitive Grant program. The order basically eliminated the government’s stated reason for canceling the grant program. The government argued that making grants based on race was unconstitutional. The court agreed with that argument, which is a big win for the Administration, since this is the first Court to so plainly agree with that assertion. But the Court further ruled that if grant requirements based on race are removed, the rest of the lawsuit can continue. The government said in a footnote of their pleading that they would be willing to immediately reinstate the Competitive Grant program if the race issue were removed. The two sides are now required to file a joint status report by August 1 that proposes a schedule for continuing the case.

So what’s next? One possibility is that the government will want to continue to dispute some of the other claims by NDIA, and if that happens, the court case would continue.

The possibility that digital inclusion advocates hope for is that the government will be good on its word and will agree to end the suit now that the race criteria are gone. If that happens, it’s likely that the Court would order NTIA to restart the Competitive Grant program.

Nobody knows what that would mean. NTIA could decide to get moving again with the grant program. However, NTIA might still be reluctant to award these grants if that’s the message they get from the Administration, and they could slow-roll the process, just like they are doing with the BEAD nondeployment funds. NTIA could decide to take a fresh look at the grant rules now that race has been removed and start the process over. Even if NTIA moves forward, I find it unlikely that NTIA would automatically honor the grants that were already awarded and would make everybody apply again. I wouldn’t make any bets that NDIA is going to get a grant award from this program.

The other half of this program is the Capacity Grant program, which was going to give money to states to make digital inclusion grant awards. There doesn’t seem to be any direct ties between this case and that grant program, so it likely stays in limbo, even if the Competitive Grant program restarts.

There is also a big concern that the Administration has recommended no funding for this program in next year’s budget, so the entire program could quietly die through lack of funding, even if NDIA prevails in this lawsuit.

There is a ray of hope here, and digital inclusion folks should continue to hope and should continue lobbying Congress to keep the funding alive and to press NTIA to make the awards. But I can’t foresee anything happening quickly, even if the Court clears this off its docket in August.