NIWR and LatinoJustice PRLDEF Oppose Charter-Cox Merger Over Equal Opportunity Concerns

On March 12, 2026, NIWR and LatinoJustice PRLDEF filed a joint comment with the New York Public Service Commission opposing the proposed merger between the telecom companies Charter Communications and Cox Enterprises as currently structured because of Charter’s inadequate commitment to equal opportunity. NIWR and LatinoJustice urged the Commission to condition approval on Charter restoring senior equal-opportunity leadership with genuine organizational authority, expanding its annual reporting to include compensation and promotion data disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and gender, extending those reporting obligations beyond five years, and requiring meaningful benchmarks and enforcement mechanisms.  This effort builds on prior work from NIWR and other organizations in successfully encouraging the California Public Utilities Commission to condition the Verizon-Frontier merger on robust worker equity commitments. NIWR recently joined Color of Change and other organizations in signing an open letter, printed as a full-page ad in The New York Times, about “Corporate Accountability, Mergers, and the Defense of Civil Rights.”