California is on the verge of winning the Right to Repair

When your phone or other device breaks, your first instinct is probably to try to get it fixed. Unfortunately, manufacturers of everything from smart phones to refrigerators have increasingly made that challenging by restricting access to repair parts, tools, and information needed to fix our stuff.

When our stuff breaks and only the manufacturer can fix it, that means they can charge whatever they want or push us to buy a new device, leading to more waste. Californians alone throw away an estimated 46,900 cell phones every day.

By fixing rather than replacing our devices, we could save money and help the planet by using less resources and producing less waste. In fact, in our report Repair Saves Families Big, we estimate that more repairs could save Californians $5 billion each year.

That’s why CALPIRG has been calling for the Right to Repair, which would bring more competition and consumer choice to the report marketplace.

Right to Repair is the idea that if you own something, you should be able to fix it. Specifically, manufacturers should make repair parts, tools, and repair information available to both consumers and independent repair shops at a fair and reasonable price.

CALPIRG first started working on this issue in 2018 after we learned that Apple admitted to intentionally throttling down the speed of iPhones, in order to sell more iPhones. That same year, an e-waste recycler named Eric Lundgren was about to be sent to jail for extending the life of Microsoft operating systems.

Our organization helped to introduce the first Right to Repair legislation in California in 2018, but the bill didn’t even get a hearing. We faced a lot of opposition from tech companies, who wanted to keep their monopoly over repair. But we knew Right to Repair was a winning policy among the public and that we could eventually overcome opposition if we brought enough visibility to the issue. We educated the public by writing and releasing several reports, including Failing the Fix which grades phone and computer companies on the repairability of their products. We held legislative briefings for the public and lawmakers in Sacramento, organized “fix it clinics,” and got news coverage KQED, ABC 7 Bay Area, the San Francisco Chronicle, the OC Register, and other media outlets.

Then Right to Repair started to gain momentum across the country. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission announced this would be an area of focus and enforcement. They looked into manufacturers’ arguments against the right to repair – that giving more people what they need to repair things will open up safety and security concerns, and the FTC found “scant evidence” of these claims.  Soon after that, President Biden called for new rules that would improve repair access.

Tech companies, including Apple, Google, and Samsung started announcing that their devices would start coming with repair services, indicating they knew Right to Repair was not only popular, but possible. Apple’s move coincides with a PIRG-backed shareholder resolution that our partners filed with the company. 

Over the last 6 years, 40 states have introduced state legislation, with laws passing in New York, Colorado and Minnesota.

Deciding to take advantage of the momentum from this growing national movement, in January 2023, CALPIRG, and our partners at Californians Against Waste and iFixit, worked with Senator Susan Eggman Talamantes to introduce Senate Bill 244, the Right to Repair Act. This was our 4th attempt at passing a Right to Repair bill in the home state of Silicon Valley.

We built a large coalition of supporters, including  82 independent repair shops, 109 local elected officials, more than 50 environmental and consumer groups, and various other recyclers, school boards and law professors.  Several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, editorialized in support. Our advocates also met with local officials, ultimately getting the city and county of Los Angeles, the City of San Diego, and others to officially endorse the Right to Repair Act.  We knew we were getting somewhere when even Apple and HP, who had been long-time opponents, came on board this year and supported the Right to Repair Act.

What started as a scrappy group of tinkerers, consumers, environmentalists and small business owners coming together to take on the tech industry, became a groundswell of support to win back the right to fix our own stuff.  Even in the home state of Big Tech, the Right to Repair is an idea whose time has come.

The Right to Repair Act was approved by the California State Legislature in September 2023, with a vote of 39-0 in the Senate and 65-1 in the Assembly. The bill now heads to Governor Newsom, who has until October 14th to sign it.