With Governor’s Signature, Minnesota Gives Residents A Right to Repair

Signed into law by Governor Tim Walz on Wednesday, the Digital Fair Repair Act is the second broad, consumer right to repair law in the U.S., after New York enacted a narrower bill in December.

The Minnesota State House: Governor Tim Walz signed the country’s most comprehensive right to repair bill into law on Wednesday.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Wednesday made his state the second in the nation to give its residents a legal right to repair. Walz signed the Digital Fair Repair Act into law following months of deliberation.

The new rules regarding repair were part of an omnibus appropriations bill (SF 2774). The Digital Fair Repair Act language was added to the larger legislative packages in late April in both the Minnesota House and Senate. In the House, SF 2744 was passed by a vote of 70-58 with Right to Repair language included. SF 2774 containing similar language passed in the Senate shortly after. Walz’s signature came after reconciled appropriations bill passed Minnesota’s legislature with strong, bipartisan support.

Article 4, Section 11 of the bill contains language guaranteeing Minnesotans the right to repair all electronics. For digital electronic equipment and parts for the equipment sold or used in Minnesota, the law reads, an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) must make available to any independent repair provider or to the owner of digital electronic equipment “documentation, parts, and tools, inclusive of any updates to information or embedded software, for diagnostic, maintenance, or repair purposes” and make it available on “fair and reasonable terms.” Parts, tools, and documentation must be made available within 60 days after the first sale of the digital electronic equipment in Minnesota.

The new law will go into effect on July 1, 2024. 

Familiar carve-outs for ag, gaming, cars

Industry lobbyists won exemptions from the law for familiar categories of products including motor vehicles, where a decade-old Massachusetts law already grants the right to repair automobiles. Other carve-outs include agricultural and construction equipment, video game consoles, specialized cybersecurity tools, and medical devices, according to the language of the bill.

Still, repair advocates said that the Minnesota law is a vast improvement over the nation’s first comprehensive right to repair law, signed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul in December, 2022.

“For the first time, the Right to Repair extends to appliances, enterprise computing and commercial equipment (such as HVAC systems). In addition, the bill covers many of the products already included in New York’s first-in-the-nation consumer electronics Right to Repair bill,” said US PIRG, the Public Interest Research Group in a statement.  

North Star State gets it right (and wrong) on cyber risk and repair

On the issue of cyber risk and repair, Minnesota’s legislature got it right…kind of. The law includes language that will prevent manufacturers from sidestepping compliance merely by invoking “cybersecurity.” Parts, documentation, or tools “related to cybersecurity” are not exempted from the law when they are “necessary for the repair or maintenance of equipment,” the law reads. That’s a win!

However, opponents of right to repair did get vague language added to the final wording of the Minnesota legislation that exempts original equipment manufacturers from having to make available “parts, documentation, or tools related to cybersecurity” which could “reasonably be used to compromise cybersecurity or cybersecurity equipment.” 

The legislation also includes an exemption for “information technology equipment that is intended for use in critical infrastructure, as defined in United States Code, title 42, section 5195c(e),” which defines “critical infrastructure” as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”  

So what counts as “critical infrastructure”? Don’t be surprised if manufacturers try to argue that everything does. They may argue, for example, that commonly used technologies ranging from routers and switches used by businesses to broadband routers to cell phones are "critical infrastructure” and should be exempted. And the use of cybersecurity concerns as a loophole in right to repair laws will continue as the share of computerized devices in the U.S. continues to grow.

Supporters said that the scope of the exemption should be limited.

“This exemption should only cover a tiny portion of repairs on the most highly protected security equipment,” PIRG wrote “It should not apply to the vast majority of server or consumer equipment, where any suggestion there is potential or capability to destabilize national security from a repair is quite outlandish.”

As with the onerous carve-outs that TechNet and other industry groups won from New York Governor Kathy Hochul before she would sign that state’s right to repair law, these last minute concessions to industry - though much more modest than the concessions in New York’s law - will fall to the state’s Attorney General to interpret. That AG, Keith Ellison, hosted a virtual seminar on repair restrictions in agriculture and has applauded the Biden Administration’s efforts to crack down on antitrust violations in agriculture.

SecuRepairs, a group of IT and cybersecurity pros who support the right to repair, called on AG Ellison to demand from manufacturers seeking exemptions concrete examples of cyber- or critical infrastructure attacks stemming from the sharing of information, parts and tools needed for repair.  Those should be weighed against the documented examples of repair restrictions that have harmed national security. Those include reports in recent years about the ways that OEM monopolies on repair and service are hampering the readiness of the U.S. Military and the smooth operation of hospitals and critical care centers, among others, SecuRepairs said in a statement.

Next up: fixing old stuff

The legislation suggests that the right to repair train continues to move along, and is picking up speed. The Minnesota bill passed less than a month after Colorado’s Governor Jared Polis signed landmark legislation covering agricultural equipment, and six months after New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed that state’s right to repair bill into law.

Minnesota’s bill closes a number of loopholes that industry lobbyists placed in the New York law, PIRG noted. In addition to doing away with New York’s carve outs for home appliances and HVAC systems, Minnesota legislation passed on the New York legislation’s (huge) exemption for technology sold to businesses and governments. Additionally, the New York legislation only covered products manufactured for the first time after July 1, 2023, whereas the Minnesota bill is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2021.

However, even that date is too restrictive, according to supporters.

Manufacturers “have some work ahead of them to enable repair of older equipment,” said Kyle Wiens the CEO of iFixit in a statement.  

Additionally, the Minnesota bill specifies that manufacturers do not have to sell parts or tools if those are no longer available.

Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org said that, going forward, right to repair legislation should preserve access to information and parts for older products, with a goal of extending the useful life of products and hardware. “We really want the service manuals for older products,” she explained. “When quality technicians have the documentation, they can typically keep fixing the product for a very long time, even without manufacturer help.”