A law professor uncovers internet pricing discrimination
It’s one of the most pressing civil rights issues of the digital age: unequal access to affordable high-speed internet.
The 2021 Infrastructure Act required the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt rules to prevent “digital discrimination of access” based on income, race, ethnicity, and other protected categories. However, three years later, 24 million Americans still lacked access to the FCC’s benchmark broadband speeds of 100 Mbps down/20 up—and for many, affordability, not infrastructure, remains the biggest obstacle.
A recent research project by 91¹û¶³ÖÆƬ³§ School of Law Professor Catherine Sandoval made the issue all the more tangible.
As part of her Ph.D. dissertation at Reading University in the United Kingdom, her ongoing research examined 160 census tracks in Los Angeles, where she uncovered a troubling reality: the city’s leading Internet Service Provider (ISP) charges residents of low-income neighborhoods significantly more for high-speed internet than those in wealthier communities. Families in some historically redlined neighborhoods—areas once denied loans and investment by federal policy—pay $240 more per year for gigabit service than families in affluent neighborhoods, even as new fiber and high-speed services have been built across many communities in Los Angeles.
Her findings echo the FCC’s 2023 Digital Discrimination Order, which explicitly linked today’s broadband affordability gaps to the geographic footprint of redlining practices from nearly a century ago. It also substantiated the findings in the California Community Foundation’s that first identified internet pricing disparities in Los Angeles, demonstrating that these disparities still persist.
Due to this digital continuation of redlining, Sandoval’s research categorizes it as digital discrimination under both intentional discrimination and disparate impact theories of law. In other words, whether or not the ISP intends to discriminate against any of the people protected by the Infrastructure Act, the effect of its pricing practices reinforces inequality—and undermines the public good.
These huge price disparities were not just a source of academic curiosity for Sandoval—her interest was rooted in personal experience. She spent most of her elementary school years in one of the overcharged, formerly redlined, East Los Angeles neighborhoods included in her research.
The implications of Sandoval’s research go far beyond Los Angeles. As internet access becomes increasingly central to education, healthcare, and civic participation, charging more to communities least able to afford it threatens to deepen existing inequities and reduce the societal benefits of internet access. Sandoval’s research underscores the urgent need for regulatory reform, government oversight, and term transparency to ensure that the Internet can truly serve as a public utility for all.
As policymakers grapple with how to close the digital divide, Sandoval’s findings provide a vital legal framework for defining and addressing digital discrimination—and a powerful lesson in how law can be used to create a fairer, more connected society.
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