Colorado’s Right to Repair Law Is The Strongest Yet. Here’s Why.
This week saw Colorado’s Governor sign what may be the planet’s most muscular right to repair legislation into law. Here’s why. Also: DOJ seeks info on private equity "roll ups" that limit repair.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Tuesday signed into law a broad electronics repair bill into law, creating what may well be the world’s strongest legal right to repair.
Sitting in a branch of the Denver Public Library and surrounded by the bill’s sponsors and pro-repair groups, Polis signed HB24-1121, the Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment. The bill, sponsored by Representatives Brianna Titone and Steven Woodrow, and Senators Jeff Bridges and Nick Hinrichsen, makes Colorado the latest U.S. state to enact a comprehensive right to repair electronics.

"Protecting our right to repair our own broken equipment will save money, strengthen small businesses, and reduce technology waste,” Governor Polis wrote in a statement. “Today we are building on our work to protect Coloradans' right to repair to ensure manufacturers cannot force Coloradans to pay extreme repair costs," he wrote.
“This action makes Colorado the ‘Right to Repair State’ – we will be able to fix more of our stuff than people in any other state,” said Danny Katz of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group (COPIRG). “Everything breaks at some point, and when it does, we should have the freedom to fix it. Coloradan consumers are now empowered with more options on when, where, and how we fix our stuff. Having these options saves us time and money while reducing the amount of waste that we produce.”
Colorado is the fourth U.S. state to pass such a law, after New York State in 2022, Minnesota and California in 2023 and Oregon in March, 2024. It is just the second state, after Oregon, to pass a right to repair law banning the use of “parts pairing” or “serialization,” in which manufacturers tie replaceable components to specific pieces of hardware, frustrating parts swapping and repair.
Businesses Score A Big Win In The Small Print
But Colorado’s new law contains a significant protection that is unique among the state right to repair laws that have been signed into law thus far: coverage for technology and devices sold to businesses large and small. That’s right: every one of the right to repair laws passed to date had carve outs for digital electronic equipment sold to businesses via so-called “B2B” or “business to business” sales. That includes everything from servers, switches and routers used in data centers to photocopiers and printers.
Previous laws, such as New York State’s include specific exemptions for digital electronic equipment sold to governments or under “business to business” contracts. Minnesota’s right to repair bill include language that seems to cover to such equipment, but also included language that exempted equipment that is “intended for use in critical infrastructure,” broad language that could potentially be construed to include a wide range of information technology used by governments and corporations.
Cisco, for example, does not offer repair services for hardware that it has decided not to support any longer (“end of support”). Customers who own such devices are instructed to replace them rather than repair them. In addition, the company states that it:
does not offer or provide any warranty for products that are repaired by third-party service repair businesses
will void the Cisco Warranty Entitlement for customers who use “unauthorized repair”
does not “certify,” “authorize,” “endorse,” or “recommend” any third-party service repair businesses
refuses to offer or provide any replacement or spare parts to third-party service repair businesses
Gay Gordon-Byrne, the head of the Repair.org, The Repair Coalition, said such policies amount to unfair practices that adversely affect businesses of all sizes.
"Businesses are also victims of unfair and deceptive acts and practices at the heart of repair monopolies,” she told Fight to Repair News. “A lack of competition for repair services adds operational costs which are passed down to customers in the form of higher pricing. Lack of support for older model equipment also drives businesses to replace equipment prematurely rather than use scarce funds to add employees, improve benefits, or invest in innovation. "
Colorado’s new law makes no such exemption, meaning that Colorado’s small (and large) businesses will gain a critical business advantage: affordable choices to service and maintain critical gear that powers their offices, data centers and more. Absent such a right, they are at the mercy of equipment makers like Cisco, Oracle, and IBM who commonly use draconian support agreements to force their customers hand on decisions about whether to maintain existing hardware or upgrade.
The impact of such business constraints is huge: The enterprise IT equipment market in the U.S. is estimated at between $50 billion and $70 billion a year. Restrictive device ecosystems create what one analyst has called “the digital equivalent of the antiquated ‘company town’ concept” in which only the manufacturer provides the goods, services, and support” for its customers and consumers at large.
Colorado’s law will effectively end such draconian policies - at least for businesses in that state. “Colorado’s taking a search-and-destroy approach to repair monopolies,” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in a statement. “We’re excited that this law will protect repair of server equipment, much of which could live a lot longer than it does now.”
Other News
DOJ, FTC seek information on acquisition “roll ups” that limit repair options
The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have “jointly launched a public inquiry May 23 to identify serial acquisitions and roll-up strategies.” This announcement aligns with actions throughout the Biden Administration such as an antitrust lawsuit against Apple by the DOJ as well as consistent actions from the FTC to crack down on repair restrictions. We are seeing additional legal action in the form of class-action lawsuits such as those against John Deere that are using access to repair.
This latest inquiry is looking to understand how companies are using their power in industries to stifle competition and hurt consumers in the pursuit of profits.
Spotify’s “Car Thing” to be bricked & abandoned
Were you one of the tens of thousands of consumers who scooped up one of those Spotify “Car Things” back in 2021? The funky looking portable devices that attached to your car dashboard and let you control your Spotify app via a touch screen or voice commands? It’s true: when you bought it, you probably weren’t expecting to be toting around your Car Thing at a vintage car show in 2060. On the other hand, you probably didn’t imagine that Spotify’s portable electronic device experiment that you just dropped $90 on would be declared “dead” in July, 2022 – barely a year later, and just five months after it went on sale to the general public?
And, as it turns out, declaring the Car Thing experiment dead was just the first shoe to drop. Less than two years later, Spotify followed that up with the decision to effectively “brick” its Car Thing devices – ending support for the hardware after December 9, 2024. After this date “Car Thing will be discontinued and will no longer be operational,” Spotify said. In other words, the Car Thing hardware is effectively trash – not because of any failing in the device itself, but because the maker of the hardware has made a business decision to stop supporting it.
The Car Thing imbroglio led to outrage among Spotify’s customers. But it is part of a growing trend in which smart device makers – empowered by always on Internet connections, digital rights management technology, cloud-based administration servers – are effectively abandoning or killing off devices they no longer wish to support – from smart home systems to e-bikes to enterprise security appliances.
For more on that, check out the panel Fight To Repair Editor In Chief Paul Roberts led in San Francisco back on May 7th. entitled Bricked and Abandoned: The IoT’s Antisocial Future And How To Fix It.
Glue makes Apple’s 13-Inch M2 iPad Air tougher to repair
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