Right to Repair Bills Have Now Been Filed in All 50 States. Only 5 Have Actually Passed One.

A genuinely rare bipartisan-interest issue, still concentrated in a handful of states

Right to repair legislation has now been introduced in all 50 states, according to tracking by PIRG and other advocacy organizations, the first time in U.S. history this specific reform has reached that level of nationwide legislative interest. But introduction and enactment are very different things: as of the end of 2025, only five states, New York, California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Colorado, had actually enacted electronics-specific right to repair laws (Colorado passed two separate laws, bringing the total enacted electronics statutes to six).

With six new laws taking effect January 1, 2026 (expanding coverage in states that already had some right to repair protections, plus Washington's new consumer electronics law), the share of Americans living in a state with an enforceable electronics right to repair law reached 25.75%, according to PIRG's population-weighted calculation, roughly one in four Americans.

What these laws actually require, and where they're expanding beyond basic electronics

Right to repair laws generally require manufacturers to make replacement parts, diagnostic tools, and repair manuals available to both product owners and independent repair shops, not just the manufacturer's own "authorized" service network. Colorado's law specifically prohibits manufacturers from using parts-pairing software, a increasingly common practice where a device electronically rejects a genuine replacement part unless it's specifically "paired" through the manufacturer's own authorized process, a tactic critics say functions as a repair barrier disguised as a security feature.

The legislative scope has expanded well beyond consumer electronics recently. Oregon and Nevada both have wheelchair-specific right to repair laws taking effect January 1, 2026. Colorado was the first state to pass right to repair legislation specifically for agricultural equipment, and multiple states are now separately pursuing automotive right to repair bills, reflecting a broader movement beyond its original smartphone-and-laptop-focused starting point.

Political dynamics: a real, if uneven, partisan divide, and signs it might be narrowing

• Success to date has been heavily concentrated in Democratic-leaning state legislatures, according to legal analysis from Reed Smith, a pattern the analysis links to the prior administration's broader embrace of expanded repair rights as part of antitrust and corporate-concentration policy
• It remains an open question, as of 2026, whether repair advocates can build support in Republican-controlled legislatures using different framing; bills have been introduced in Florida, Missouri, and other Republican-leaning states, though none had passed as of the most recent tracking
• 83 right to repair bills were introduced in just the first few weeks of the 2026 legislative session alone across 13 states, according to Waste Dive reporting, suggesting continued, broad-based legislative interest regardless of ultimate passage rates
• No federal right to repair statute has been enacted for digital electronics specifically, though multiple federal bills, including the REPAIR Act, remain active in Congress, and the FTC has pursued some enforcement under existing warranty law without issuing formal right-to-repair rulemaking

Public support is unusually high for a technical regulatory issue

According to Consumer Reports survey data cited in multiple 2026 analyses, 87% of Americans support right to repair legislation, a notably high figure for a specific regulatory policy question, and one of the reasons advocates describe this as a genuinely unusual bipartisan-potential issue even though actual legislative success has concentrated in one party's states so far.

The core disagreement

Right to repair advocates generally argue consumers who purchase a product should have a genuine right to fix it themselves or choose an independent repairer, not be functionally locked into a manufacturer's own service network, and argue manufacturer restrictions like parts pairing exist primarily to protect service revenue rather than genuine safety or security concerns. Manufacturers and industry groups, represented in federal proceedings primarily by groups like CTIA and the Consumer Technology Association, generally argue that unrestricted third-party repair access raises genuine safety, security, and intellectual property concerns, particularly for complex modern electronics with tightly integrated software and hardware. Both sides broadly agree the legislative momentum itself is real and continuing to build, the genuine disagreement is over exactly how far manufacturer obligations should extend, and whether current state laws strike that balance correctly.