30 States Considering ‘Right To Repair’ Reforms in 2024

Oregon recently became the seventh state to pass “right to repair” legislation making it easier, cheaper, and more convenient to repair technology you own. The bill’s passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York, Minnesota, Maine and California.

U.S. consumer protection has generally been a feckless mess across a wide variety of issues. But the right to repair the stuff you own without weird DRM, restrictions, special tools, or a dealership visit seems to have broken through the partisan bickering and formed a sustainable, popular movement corporations like Apple, John Deere, and others have struggled to contain.

Nathan Proctor, Senior Director of the Campaign for the Right to Repair at PIRG, notes that there’re 30 different states that are considering some type of right to repair reforms. Oregon’s new law (which Apple attempted to undermine repeatedly) was arguably the toughest yet:

“On March 27, Gov. Tina Kotek signed Oregon’s Right to Repair bill into law, making Oregon the fourth state to enact Right to Repair rules for consumer electronics, including appliances, laptops and cell phones. Oregon’s bill is the first in the nation to ban manufacturers from using software to prevent technicians from fully installing spare parts, a practice called “parts pairing.” 

Not all of the bills are created equal. Massachusetts’ law has been bogged down in lawsuits by the auto industry, which has lied repeatedly about how the bill would aid sexual predators. New York’s right to repair law was watered down almost to the point of uselessness after Governor Kathy Hochul cowed to lobbyist demands to exempt numerous practices and industries.

But the movement continues unabated, despite the best efforts of numerous industries (with dodgy track records on privacy and security) that desperately want the public to believe that cheaper, more affordable repair options pose a significant privacy and security risk to the general public.

Still there’s very clearly work to be done on messaging. Surveys indicate that 45 percent of the U.S. public had never heard of right to repair, and another 22 percent had, but had no idea how it applied to them personally. The race is now on to properly educate those folks before corporations trying to protect their repair monopolies fill their heads with other ideas.