06: The Right To
EQUITABLE INFRASTRUCTURE
All people shall have equal access to high-speed, high-quality technological infrastructure, with equal internet access.
Catherine Sandoval
Shaped by a career in law, regulation, and public service, including her work as a former Commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission and as a legal scholar, Catherine J.K. Sandoval brings a systems-level understanding of how infrastructure determines who can participate fully in society. Her work centers on the idea that infrastructure is the foundation of democracy, opportunity, and collective well-being.
Equitable access to infrastructure must be recognized as a fundamental right in the twenty-first century. Roads, bridges, energy, water, and broadband are not luxuries. They are the systems that make education possible, health care accessible, businesses viable, and civic participation real. When infrastructure is unreliable, unaffordable, or unavailable, opportunity collapses. When infrastructure is equitable, the entire nation benefits.
Unlike many countries, the United States treats access to infrastructure as largely discretionary. It is shaped by political decisions and often controlled by private companies. This means that something essential to daily life is not guaranteed equally to all people. That structure creates inequality by design. A right to equitable infrastructure would change the premise: access would no longer depend on wealth, geography, or political influence, but on human need and democratic fairness.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 was an important beginning because it recognized equity as a goal. Equity does not mean limiting success or preventing innovation. It means understanding that certain resources are so foundational that unequal access harms everyone. When children cannot connect to school, when families lack safe water or stable energy, or when communities are cut off from digital participation, the consequences ripple outward. We lose future workers, future leaders, and future contributors. These are not isolated problems. They are societal failures.
The pandemic made this undeniable. Zoom classrooms revealed that many low-income, rural, tribal, and minority communities could not get online or stay online. This gap not only affected individual students it weakened the education system itself. It disrupted families, teachers, and entire communities. Infrastructure inequity does not stay contained. It spreads its damage across society.
The law now prohibits digital discrimination of access and directs the FCC to define rules and accept complaints. But without a private right of action, enforcement remains fragile. A right that cannot be meaningfully enforced is not yet a right. Oversight matters because discrimination today is often structural rather than visible. It appears in pricing, availability, and investment patterns that quietly exclude certain communities.
My research shows this clearly. In Los Angeles, residents of low-income neighborhoods, including historically redlined communities, are charged significantly more for high-speed internet than residents of wealthier areas. Poorer communities pay more because companies charge them more, particularly in areas where there is not another competitor offering high-speed Internet. This pricing structure undermines access to education, work, health, and civic life for those who already face barriers.
Redlining from nearly a century ago still casts a shadow on the digital era. Communities that were intentionally excluded from infrastructure investment continue to be underserved today. Affordability is often named as the problem, but the deeper truth is why affordability is a problem: because systems are designed to extract more from those who have less.
Infrastructure is not merely technical. It is moral. It determines whose lives are supported and whose are constrained. It decides whether children can learn, whether families can remain healthy, and whether communities can participate in democracy. When infrastructure is inequitable, democracy becomes fragile.
The world has changed dramatically since the founding of this nation. Communication, energy, water systems, and transportation are now complex, interconnected, and essential to survival. Just as earlier generations recognized the need for public roads and clean water, this generation must recognize broadband, energy reliability, and infrastructure safety as rights that define modern citizenship.
To affirm the right to equitable infrastructure is to declare that no community is expendable. It is to recognize that prosperity depends on shared foundations. When infrastructure is fair, everyone benefits. When it is unequal, the future is weakened for all.
This right is about more than construction. It is about rebuilding trust, opportunity, and the promise of democracy itself.