Dish Continuing to Fight Tower Lawsuits
The company is looking to combine the seven federal cases it’s facing.
WASHINGTON, March 19, 2026 – Dish is continuing to fight back against lawsuits over its position that it doesn’t owe tower lease payments after its parent company sold much of its spectrum.
Those sales from EchoStar “make it impossible for DISH Wireless to continue to build, operate, or pay for a wireless network,” the company wrote in a Monday filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, where it’s being sued by Crown Castle. “The purpose of DISH Wireless’s contracts with the Towers Providers was completely frustrated, and DISH Wireless’s performance under the contracts themselves was rendered commercially impractical, indeed impossible.”
Dish is facing more than a dozen lawsuits, seven of which are in federal court, after it stopped paying tower leases and other fees under the rationale that those sales were forced by Federal Communications Commission pressure. Dish won’t receive any of the $42.6 billion purchase price and thus can’t make payments through no fault of its own, the company has argued.
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