For the first time in U.S. history, right to repair legislation has been filed in every single state — and 2025 C.E. marked the movement’s most successful legislative year ever, with five states passing laws that require manufacturers to give consumers and independent shops real access to the parts, tools, and documentation needed to fix the electronics and equipment they already own.
At a glance
- Right to repair laws: Five states — New York, California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Colorado — have now passed electronics right to repair legislation, meaning one in five Americans lives somewhere with legal repair protections.
- All 50 states: With the introduction of a bill in Wisconsin, every U.S. state has now had right to repair legislation introduced — a sweep advocates have been working toward since the first electronics bill was filed in South Dakota in 2014 C.E.
- Active legislation: Bills are currently active in 24 states, reflecting broad, bipartisan public demand for consumer ownership rights and repair competition.
What these laws actually do
For years, many manufacturers designed products to be serviced only through their own authorized networks — locking out independent shops and individual owners through proprietary parts, encrypted diagnostics, and withheld documentation. The new state laws break that model.
Under the legislation, manufacturers must make repair manuals and diagnostic software publicly available and sell replacement parts at fair prices. That applies to digital electronics in some states and extends to farm equipment in others. Colorado’s law is among the most expansive, covering agricultural machinery. New York was an early mover focused on consumer electronics.
For independent repair shops — many of them small, community-based businesses — this access changes what’s economically possible. They can now compete for work that manufacturers previously funneled to their own service centers. That means more local jobs, lower costs for consumers, and longer-lived products.
The environmental case for repair
The World Economic Forum estimates that e-waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams on the planet. Most discarded electronics aren’t recycled effectively — they contain valuable metals and hazardous materials that end up in landfills or informal recycling operations, often in lower-income countries that had no role in producing that waste.
Right to repair laws attack the problem at the source. When a cracked screen or a failed battery no longer means replacing an entire device, the raw materials and manufacturing energy already embedded in that product go further. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has flagged electronics manufacturing as a significant source of carbon emissions and resource extraction — extending product life is one of the most direct ways to cut that footprint.
It’s a principle that connects repair rights to the broader push for sustainable consumption: the greenest product is often the one you already own.
Eleven years of grassroots organizing
This milestone didn’t come from top-down policy. It came from more than a decade of organizing by repair advocates, independent shop owners, farmers frustrated by locked-down tractor software, and consumer rights groups including U.S. PIRG and Repair.org. The coalition is deliberately broad — rural and urban, left and right — which explains why bills have found bipartisan support across multiple state legislatures.
“Here, there and everywhere — people just want to fix their stuff,” said Nathan Proctor, PIRG’s Senior Right to Repair Campaign Director. “Americans are fed up with all the ways in which manufacturers of everything from toasters to tractors frustrate or block repairs, and lawmakers are hearing that frustration and taking action.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also played a key role, pushing back against the intellectual property arguments manufacturers use to justify repair restrictions. Their work helped reframe the debate: this isn’t about circumventing copyright — it’s about who owns a product after it’s sold.
Over time, manufacturers themselves have begun shifting. Google is now a major supporter of right to repair legislation in the U.S., and Apple has come on board to support some laws — a striking reversal from the early years when the industry’s default position was opposition.
What’s still unresolved
Five states passing laws is a landmark, but the patchwork of state-level legislation creates real complexity. Someone in a state without a law still faces the same locked-out repairs as before. Federal right to repair legislation has been introduced repeatedly and has stalled each time.
There’s also an open question about enforcement. Laws requiring parts availability are only as strong as the agencies monitoring compliance — and advocates are already watching whether manufacturers find ways to technically comply while practically limiting access. The Federal Trade Commission has documented these kinds of workarounds in detail.
Still, the trajectory is clear. With active legislation in 24 states and bills on the books everywhere else, the right to repair has moved from fringe cause to mainstream demand. The same kind of patient, consistent advocacy that has produced progress across other long-running public interest campaigns — from clean energy to public health — is what got the movement here. Advocates have every reason to keep pushing.
Read more
For more on this story, see: iFixit — Right to repair laws have now been introduced in all 50 U.S. states
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- U.K. cancer death rates are at their lowest level on record
- The Good News for Humankind archive on consumer rights
About this article
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