Right to Repair: Why You Can’t Fix Your Own Stuff and What’s Being Done About It

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A smartphone slips from your hand, and the screen shatters. Your refrigerator stops cooling. In the middle of harvest season, a high-tech tractor grinds to a halt.

A few decades ago, these problems had clear solutions. A trip to a local repair shop or some DIY ingenuity could often solve the issue.

Today, the path to a fix is often deliberately complicated. You may discover that only the original manufacturer can perform the repair, that essential parts are unavailable to you or your local mechanic, or that a software lock prevents a perfectly good replacement part from working at all.

This modern dilemma is at the heart of the Right to Repair movement. It’s a growing coalition of consumers, farmers, small business owners, and advocates fighting to restore the fundamental ability of people to fix the things they own.

What is the “Right to Repair”

At its core, the Right to Repair is both a legal concept and a social movement. Legally, it’s the right for owners of devices and equipment to freely modify and repair the products they have purchased. As a social movement, it involves citizens and advocacy groups pressuring governments to enact laws that protect this right from manufacturer-imposed barriers.

The ultimate goal is to shift our economy from a “replace” culture to a “repair” culture, making fixes more affordable and accessible. This fosters sustainability and reduces waste.

To achieve this, the movement focuses on four essential pillars of repairability. These aren’t separate demands but a set of interconnected principles that must work together. A manufacturer that controls even one of these pillars can effectively maintain a monopoly over the entire repair process.

Access to Information

Advocates argue that consumers and independent repair shops should have access to the same repair manuals, diagnostic information, and design schematics that manufacturers provide to their authorized dealers. This information already exists for the manufacturer’s internal use, but it’s often withheld from the public.

This lack of transparency makes do-it-yourself and independent repairs more difficult and, as manufacturers sometimes argue, more dangerous. The risk is created by the very act of withholding the safety information itself.

Access to Parts and Tools

The movement demands that original equipment manufacturer spare parts and any necessary tools be made available for purchase to everyone at fair and reasonable market conditions. Currently, many manufacturers restrict the sale of genuine parts to their authorized service networks.

This practice creates a “repair monopoly,” allowing them to control the market and set artificially high prices for repairs. For example, a smartphone screen repair is often priced at just under half the cost of a new device. This strategic price point, known as the “50% rule,” encourages many consumers to simply buy a new product instead of fixing their old one.

Freedom from Software Locks

Perhaps the most significant modern barrier to repair is the use of prohibitive software. A key tactic is “parts pairing,” where a device’s main circuit board is digitally serialized and “paired” to its original components, such as the screen, battery, or camera.

When a new part is installed, even a genuine one from another device, the product’s software will refuse to accept it, leading to error messages or reduced functionality. The only way to make the new part work is for the manufacturer to use a proprietary software tool to validate the repair. This tool they keep secret from the public and independent shops.

This digital blockade effectively prevents the use of third-party or salvaged parts, forcing consumers into the manufacturer’s expensive repair ecosystem.

Repair-Friendly Design

The movement advocates for products to be designed for easy repair from the outset. This is a direct challenge to the practice of “planned obsolescence,” where items are deliberately made with short lifespans to drive new sales.

Common anti-repair design choices include using industrial-strength glue to secure batteries, making them nearly impossible to replace; soldering essential components like memory directly to the motherboard, preventing upgrades; and using proprietary screws that require special, hard-to-find tools.

A legislative victory for this principle can be seen in the European Union, which mandated that all small electronic devices must use a standardized USB-C charging port, ending the need for proprietary connectors like Apple’s Lightning port.

The Case for Repair: Why Advocates Say This Matters

The arguments for a robust Right to Repair extend beyond simple convenience, touching on fundamental economic, environmental, and social issues. These components form a larger vision for a more sustainable and equitable system known as a “circular economy.”

Unlike a traditional linear model of “take-make-dispose,” a circular economy aims to “make-use-repair-reuse-recycle,” keeping products and materials in circulation for as long as possible. Right to Repair is the legal and practical key that unlocks the “repair” and “reuse” links in that chain.

The Economic Argument

For individuals, the benefits are clear. Research suggests that enabling consumers to repair common electronics and appliances instead of replacing them could save the average American household $330 per year. This directly counters the manufacturer-driven “50% rule” that pushes consumers toward costly replacements.

Beyond individual savings, Right to Repair is a powerful engine for local economies. Repair restrictions have squeezed independent repair shops, which are overwhelmingly small, local businesses. By leveling the playing field and ensuring access to parts and information, these laws foster fair competition and create skilled, local jobs that cannot be outsourced.

This provides a direct economic boost to communities, particularly in rural areas where access to authorized dealers may be limited.

The Environmental Argument

The environmental stakes are immense. Electronic waste, or e-waste, is the fastest-growing domestic waste stream in the world. In the U.S., an estimated 416,000 cell phones are thrown away every single day. Globally, a staggering 82.6% of e-waste is not properly collected or recycled.

This has two devastating consequences. First, when e-waste is dumped in landfills, toxic materials like lead, mercury, and nickel can leach into the soil and groundwater, causing severe damage to ecosystems and human health. Much of this waste is shipped to developing countries, where it’s often dismantled in unsafe conditions, exposing workers to hazardous substances.

Second, throwing away electronics means throwing away valuable resources. The raw materials—including gold, silver, copper, and iron—lost in discarded e-waste are valued at a minimum of $57 billion annually.

By extending the lifespan of products through repair, we can reduce the need for new manufacturing, which cuts down on the carbon emissions and resource depletion associated with mining and production.

The Ownership Argument

At its philosophical core, the movement is about the principle of ownership. As advocates state, “If you bought it, you should have the right to use, modify, and repair it whenever, wherever, and however you want.” This idea resonates with the traditional American value of property rights and a DIY spirit.

Proponents argue that when you buy a product, you own it in its entirety—not just the physical shell, with the functional soul remaining under the manufacturer’s control.

The Equity Argument

The negative impacts of repair restrictions are not felt equally. A landmark 2021 Federal Trade Commission report found that the high costs associated with manufacturer-controlled repairs “disproportionally burdens Americans in financial distress.”

The report further noted that “the burden of repair restrictions may fall more heavily on communities of color and lower-income communities.” Because many small repair businesses are owned by people of color, the difficulties these shops face due to repair restrictions can have a disproportionate economic impact on those communities as well.

The Pushback: Why Manufacturers Restrict Repairs

Manufacturers and their trade associations present a unified set of arguments against broad Right to Repair legislation, centering on risks to consumers, data security, and their own business interests. These justifications are then used to rationalize a range of tactics that guide customers away from independent repair and back toward their own authorized service networks.

This represents a strategic evolution in maintaining market control, shifting from easily overcome physical barriers to more absolute digital ones protected by intellectual property law.

The Official Rationale

When lobbying against Right to Repair bills, manufacturers consistently raise the following concerns:

Safety Risks: The most frequently cited justification is safety. They argue that untrained consumers or independent technicians could injure themselves while performing repairs, particularly on devices with high-voltage components or volatile lithium-ion batteries. They also claim that an improper repair could cause a product to malfunction dangerously, posing a risk to the user.

Cybersecurity Threats: Manufacturers contend that providing broad access to diagnostic software, firmware, and other internal tools could create security vulnerabilities. They warn that this could make devices susceptible to hacking and data theft, with some lobbyists suggesting that states with strong repair laws could become “havens for hackers.”

Protecting Intellectual Property: Repair manuals, schematics, and diagnostic software are considered valuable trade secrets and copyrighted material. Manufacturers argue that being forced to share this proprietary information would undermine their investment in research and development, erode their competitive advantage, and hand their IP to competitors.

Liability and Brand Reputation: Companies worry that if a product fails after a third-party repair, the consumer will blame the original manufacturer, not the independent technician. This could lead to unfair reputational damage and potential liability lawsuits if an injury occurs.

The Tactics on the Ground

These official arguments are used to justify a variety of restrictive practices designed to make independent repair difficult, if not impossible.

Physical Obstacles: Products are often designed in ways that actively discourage repair. This includes using proprietary screws (like Apple’s pentalobe screws) that require special tools, using copious amounts of industrial adhesive where simple screws would suffice, and soldering key components like memory or processors directly to the motherboard, which prevents both repair and upgrades.

Creating Scarcity: Manufacturers often refuse to sell genuine parts, tools, and repair documentation to anyone outside their network of “authorized” service providers. This creates an artificial scarcity that allows them to maintain a lucrative monopoly on repairs, dictating prices without competition.

Software Blockades: The most effective modern tactics are software-based. Parts pairing digitally links a device’s original components to its main board. A replacement part, even a genuine one, will be rejected by the device’s software unless it’s validated online using the manufacturer’s proprietary tools. This is the ultimate barrier, as it can render a physically perfect repair functionally useless.

Intimidation and Feature Gating: Manufacturers use software to undermine consumer confidence in independent repair. For example, an iPhone with a third-party screen replacement may display persistent, non-dismissible warnings that the screen is not a “genuine” part. In a more extreme case, some John Deere tractors are programmed to enter a slow-moving “limp mode” when certain errors are detected, a state that can only be cleared by a dealer with access to exclusive software.

What the Federal Trade Commission Found

Amid the heated debate between consumer advocates and corporate lobbyists, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission conducted an extensive investigation, culminating in its May 2021 report to Congress, “Nixing the Fix.” The report, based on a public workshop, expert testimony, and empirical data, systematically examined manufacturers’ justifications for repair restrictions and found them largely unsubstantiated.

Debunking the Justifications

The “Nixing the Fix” report directly addressed the core arguments made by manufacturers:

On Safety: The FTC found “scant evidence” to support the claim that repairs performed by independent shops are less safe than those done by authorized dealers. The report also pointed out the logical inconsistency in these claims: manufacturers cannot argue that repairs are dangerous without proper instructions and then proceed to withhold those very instructions. In fact, by doing so, they may be “exacerbating the very safety risks they have raised as concerns.”

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics further undermines this claim, showing that the electronics repair industry has an occupational injury rate six times lower than the national average.

On Cybersecurity: The commission stated unequivocally, “The record contains no empirical evidence to suggest that independent repair shops are more or less likely than authorized repair shops to compromise or misuse customer data.” Cybersecurity experts who testified noted that a securely designed product cannot be compromised by the types of tools and information needed for repair.

Right to Repair laws only ask for the same access already provided to thousands of authorized technicians, whose security is managed through contracts and best practices, not by withholding information entirely.

On Liability and Reputation: Manufacturers provided “no empirical evidence to support their concerns about reputational harm or potential liability” resulting from third-party repairs. Existing bodies of U.S. tort and negligence law already establish who is liable when a faulty repair causes harm or loss. Right to Repair legislation does not assign any new or additional liability to the original manufacturer for a mistake made by an independent repairer.

The FTC’s overall conclusion was that repair restrictions significantly harm consumers by increasing costs, limiting choice, and creating waste, while also hurting small businesses—all with little credible justification.

Table: Manufacturer Arguments vs. Federal Findings

The Law of the Land: Right to Repair Legislation in the U.S.

While the Right to Repair movement feels modern, its legal foundations in the U.S. are decades old. However, as technology has outpaced these older laws, the primary legislative battle has shifted from Washington, D.C. to the states, resulting in a “patchwork of progress” as individual legislatures take the lead.

Federal Foundation

Two key federal laws provide the backdrop for the current debate:

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (1975): This cornerstone consumer protection law, enforced by the FTC, makes it illegal for a company to void a product’s warranty because the consumer used an aftermarket part or had it serviced by an independent repair shop. The only exceptions are if the manufacturer provides the necessary parts or service for free or if they obtain a specific waiver from the FTC—a rare occurrence.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA): Passed in 1998, this law includes anti-circumvention provisions that make it illegal to break software locks or “technological protection measures” that control access to copyrighted material. This became a major barrier to repairing modern electronics.

However, the law allows the U.S. Copyright Office to grant temporary exemptions. In a major victory for the movement in 2018, the office granted a broad exemption allowing the circumvention of software locks for the purpose of “maintenance” and “repair” of most electronic devices. The FTC and Department of Justice have since advocated for renewing and expanding these crucial exemptions.

The Rise of State-Level Action

With no single, comprehensive federal Right to Repair law on the books, advocates have focused their efforts at the state level. In recent years, over 40 states have seen some form of repair legislation introduced. This state-by-state strategy has begun to bear fruit, with several states enacting landmark laws that are setting a new national standard.

State Law Case Studies

The first wave of broad electronics repair laws in New York, California, and Minnesota provides a clear picture of how repair principles are being translated into public policy.

New York: The Pioneer (Digital Fair Repair Act): New York was the first state to enact a broad Right to Repair law for electronics, which took effect in 2023. The law requires manufacturers to make parts, tools, and repair information available for most digital electronic equipment sold in the state after July 1, 2023.

However, the bill was amended at the last minute following intense industry lobbying. These changes created what critics call significant loopholes, such as allowing manufacturers to offer entire “assemblies” of parts instead of individual components (which can drive up costs) and exempting tools used to bypass security features.

California: The Economic Powerhouse (Right to Repair Act – SB 244): Given the size of its market, California’s law, which took effect July 1, 2024, is highly influential. It covers a wide range of electronics and appliances manufactured after July 1, 2021.

A key provision requires manufacturers to make parts and information available for at least three years for products costing between $50 and $99.99, and for at least seven years for products costing $100 or more. The law notably exempts some product categories, including video game consoles and alarm systems.

Minnesota: The Broadest Scope (Digital Fair Repair Act): Minnesota’s law, effective July 1, 2024, is widely considered one of the nation’s strongest. It applies retroactively to products sold on or after July 1, 2021, and crucially, it covers products sold in business-to-business and educational contexts, not just to individual consumers. The law is enforced by the state’s Attorney General, who can investigate violations and levy penalties.

Table: Comparison of Key State Right to Repair Laws

Industry Battlegrounds: Where the Fight is Happening

The Right to Repair debate is not a monolithic struggle; it plays out differently across various sectors, each with its own unique stakes and arguments. The credibility of the manufacturer’s core “safety” argument varies dramatically depending on the context—ranging from a debunked talking point in consumer electronics to a genuinely life-or-death concern in the medical field.

Consumer Electronics

This is the most visible front in the repair war, affecting billions of devices like smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Here, the concept of “planned obsolescence” is rampant, with manufacturers designing products with artificially short lifespans to fuel replacement sales.

A notorious example is the practice of pushing software updates that intentionally slow down older phone models, a tactic for which Apple was fined in Europe after it was exposed. This is the arena where the FTC has most thoroughly debunked safety and security claims, making the manufacturers’ arguments appear more like a pretext for maintaining profitable repair monopolies.

Agriculture

In rural America, the battle is intensely personal and economic. Modern farm equipment is a marvel of engineering, but it’s also heavily dependent on proprietary software. Manufacturers like John Deere use software locks that prevent farmers or their local independent mechanics from performing many repairs.

Instead, a simple sensor failure can require a farmer to wait for an authorized dealer technician—who may be hours away—to arrive and enter a diagnostic code. For a farmer, this downtime during a tight planting or harvest window is not a mere inconvenience; it can be a financial disaster that threatens their entire year’s crop and livelihood.

The economic impact is twofold: farmers are forced to pay dealership repair rates, where profit margins can be up to five times higher than on the original equipment sale, and local economies lose out on the business that would otherwise go to independent mechanics.

Medical Devices

This is by far the most contentious and high-stakes battleground. On one side, hospitals, clinical engineers, and their service organizations argue that manufacturer restrictions on repairing medical equipment cause dangerous delays and drive up healthcare costs.

The issue gained national attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, when hospitals struggled to get life-saving ventilators and other critical devices serviced in a timely manner. Proponents argue that their certified biomedical technicians are fully qualified to perform safe and effective repairs if given access to the necessary manuals and parts.

On the other side, medical device manufacturers, represented by trade groups like AdvaMed, argue that allowing unregulated third-party servicing of complex, life-or-death equipment poses an unacceptable risk to patient safety. They point to FDA data showing thousands of “adverse events,” including 40 deaths and 294 serious injuries, that have been associated with devices serviced by third parties.

However, repair advocates counter that this data is incomplete, as the FDA does not require independent servicers to report such events, unlike manufacturers. The FDA itself, in a 2018 report to Congress, stated that the available evidence was “not sufficient to conclude whether or not there is a widespread public health concern” that would justify new regulations on third-party servicers.

Because the safety argument is most potent and credible in this sector, medical devices have been consistently exempted from the state-level Right to Repair laws passed to date.

Automotive

The automotive sector is the birthplace of the Right to Repair movement. The first major victory came in 2012 with the passage of Massachusetts’ Motor Vehicle Owners’ Right to Repair Act, which guaranteed car owners and independent shops access to the same diagnostic information available to dealers via the on-board diagnostics (OBD-2) port.

Now, the fight has evolved. The new frontier is telematics—the systems in modern vehicles that wirelessly transmit vast amounts of operational data directly and exclusively to the manufacturer. This positions the automaker as the sole “gatekeeper” of the data required for advanced diagnostics and repair, threatening to lock independent shops out of the market for servicing newer cars.

In response, advocacy groups like the Auto Care Association are pushing for new federal legislation, the REPAIR Act, to ensure that vehicle owners and the repair shops of their choice have direct, real-time access to this wirelessly transmitted data.

Corporate Responses: How Major Companies Are Adapting

As legislative pressure mounts, major corporations are moving away from outright opposition and toward more nuanced strategies. These responses range from begrudging compliance that maintains the status quo to genuine, if quiet, cooperation.

Apple: From Opposition to “Malicious Compliance”

For years, Apple was a leading opponent of Right to Repair. However, facing immense pressure, the company has shifted its public stance, going so far as to support California’s SB 244 and launching its own Self Service Repair program. This program provides public access to genuine Apple parts, tools, and repair manuals.

However, independent reviews and analysis reveal a more complex reality. For many common repairs, like replacing a battery or screen, using Apple’s program is often more difficult, time-consuming, and even more expensive than simply paying Apple to do the repair professionally. The tool rental kit for an iPhone repair weighs a staggering 79 pounds and arrives in two massive cases.

Crucially, the program is built on a foundation of “parts pairing.” After a customer completes a repair, they must contact Apple to have the new part remotely validated via a software configuration tool; without this digital “handshake,” the part may not function correctly.

This approach is seen by many critics as a form of “malicious compliance”—following the letter of the law by making parts available, but in a way so cumbersome and restrictive that the company’s de facto repair monopoly remains firmly in place.

John Deere: A Contradiction in Terms

John Deere’s public messaging on repair appears supportive. The company’s website states, “We fully support a customer safely maintaining, diagnosing, and repairing their own equipment,” and it offers tools like the Customer Service ADVISOR diagnostic system for purchase.

This public stance is at odds with the experience of many farmers. The company is the target of multiple class-action lawsuits alleging it has created an illegal monopoly over repair by using restrictive software locks.

While manuals and tools are technically available, they can be prohibitively expensive. Technical manuals often cost over $100, and specialized service tools can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, making independent repair a costly endeavor. This creates a significant gap between the company’s stated policy and the on-the-ground reality for its customers.

Microsoft: The Quiet Conversion

Microsoft’s journey represents a significant strategic shift for a Big Tech company. After years of actively fighting repair legislation, the company changed course following a shareholder resolution in 2021. It began expanding access to spare parts, partnered with the repair guide website iFixit, and even commissioned a study that confirmed the environmental benefits of extending the life of its products through repair.

Most significantly, Microsoft moved from opposition to quiet cooperation on the legislative front. The company engaged productively with lawmakers and advocates in Washington state, shifting its position on a proposed bill from opposition to neutrality, and eventually to behind-the-scenes support.

This turnaround suggests a recognition that repair legislation is becoming inevitable and that it’s more strategic to help shape the laws than to fight them.

What This Means for You

The Right to Repair movement is fundamentally about empowering consumers, strengthening local economies, and protecting the environment. Understanding your rights and how to participate is key to ensuring its continued success.

The Economic Impact

The stakes are both personal and global. For your household, the ability to choose affordable repair over costly replacement could save an average of $330 per year. This choice has a ripple effect on the broader economy.

By repairing, you’re helping to reduce the $57 billion worth of valuable materials like gold, copper, and iron that are thrown away in e-waste each year. Furthermore, you’re supporting a vibrant local economy of independent repair shops, which create skilled jobs in our communities.

Choosing repair is a vote for a more efficient, less wasteful, and more community-oriented economy.

How to Get Involved

As a citizen, you have the power to influence this issue. Here are some actionable steps you can take:

Know Your Rights and Report Violations: Check if your state has passed a Right to Repair law. If you live in a state like Minnesota and believe a manufacturer is violating the law by refusing to provide parts or information, you can file a report with the state’s enforcement body.

You can also report bad business practices to the federal government through the FTC’s reporting portal.

Support Advocacy Groups: Several key organizations are leading the legislative and public awareness campaigns:

• The Repair Association: A coalition of businesses and consumers that is a central hub for legislative action across the country
• U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG): A powerful public interest group that advocates for Right to Repair at both state and federal levels
• iFixit: A company that provides thousands of free repair guides and tools, and is a vocal advocate for repair-friendly product design and legislation
• Culture of Repair: An organization focused on promoting the value of repair and providing resources to the public

Contact Your Representatives: The Right to Repair battle is largely being fought in state legislatures. Contacting your state representatives and senators to voice your support for fair repair legislation is one of the most effective actions you can take. Explain why this issue matters to you as a constituent—whether it’s about saving money, supporting local businesses, or protecting the environment.

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