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A cracked phone screen used to mean a trip to a corner repair shop and a bill under a hundred dollars. For a lot of devices today, it means something closer to a negotiation with the manufacturer itself, who controls the parts, the diagnostic software and sometimes even whether a genuine replacement part is allowed to work at all. The right to repair movement is a pushback against the shift, and over the past few years, it has gone from a niche consumer complaint to a real legal and legislative force.
Modern devices, from homes to tractors, have software woven into almost every component during manufacturing. That’s not inherently a bad thing, but manufacturers have increasingly used it to control who’s allowed to fix what they sell. Some companies pair replacement parts to a specific device using proprietary software, so that even a genuine part from the same manufacturer won’t fully function unless installed and authorized through official channels.
Others simply withhold diagnostic tools and repair manuals from anyone outside their authorized dealer network, which forces customers toward pricier official repairs or, often, toward just buying a new product. This is especially concerning considering that consumers recycle only an estimated quarter of their electronics, the rest ends up in landfills.
This trend is especially concerning when it shows up in wheelchairs, medical equipment, and, notably, farm machinery, where a tractor with a blown sensor can sit unusable for days while waiting on an authorized technician, even if the farmer or a local mechanic could fix it in an afternoon with the right tools.
People have been frustrated with planned obsolescence and locked-down devices for a long time, but right to repair only became an organized movement in the last fifteen years or so, driven largely by independent repair shops, environmentalists, activist groups and farmers. In fact, the agricultural side of the fight has been one of its most visible fronts.
John Deere and other equipment makers built business models around restricting access to repair software, and farmers, who have obvious reasons to want their own equipment fixed quickly during planting or harvest season, became some of the loudest advocates for change.
The movement gained real traction once state legislatures started passing actual laws rather than just holding hearings. New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act, which went into effect in late 2023, was one of the first comprehensive electronic repair laws in the country.
Many states, including California and Colorado, passed similar laws, and dozens more states are considering their own versions. Oregon’s law went a step further than most by specifically banning parts pairing, the practice of using software to lock replacement parts to a single device.
If there’s one company that’s become the public face of the resistance to right to repair, it’s John Deere. Independent repair shops and farm advocacy groups spent years pushing the company to release its diagnostic software, and when voluntary agreements didn’t go far enough, the fight moved to the courts.
In January 2025, the Federal Trade Commission sued Deere, alleging the company had built an illegal monopoly over repair services by limiting full access to its diagnostic tools to its own authorized dealer network. A federal judge let the case move forward after rejecting Deere’s request to have it dismissed.
Separately, Deere agreed to pay $99 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by farmers over the same basic complaint. As part of that settlement, the company agreed to make certain repair and diagnostic tools available to equipment owners and independent shops for at least a decade, all without admitting wrongdoing.
One of the more unusual things about right to repair is how little it has split along the usual party lines. It’s both a consumer-rights issue and an antitrust issue, which gives it appeal across the political spectrum.
Progressives tend to emphasize environmental waste and corporate overreach, while conservatives and rural lawmakers tend to emphasize property rights and farmers’ ability to fix what they own. That combination has produced some unlikely legislative partnerships and helped right to repair bills move through state legislatures with less friction than most consumer protection laws typically see.
Tech and equipment manufacturers haven’t all responded the same way. Apple, which spent years actively opposing right to repair legislation, has softened its position somewhat, launching its own self-service repair program and supporting some state-level legislation. This was partly in response to the sheer number of state bills it would have otherwise had to fight individually.
Other companies, including Samsung, have faced continued criticism for keeping repairs difficult and parts hard to source. In the agricultural and medical device spaces, resistance has been generally firmer, with companies citing safety, security and intellectual property concerns as reasons to keep their repair tools restricted.
Despite the recent momentum, the existing laws are uneven. Many state right to repair laws exclude entire categories of products, including large agricultural equipment and medical devices. This is often because manufacturers lobbied hard to carve their industries out during the legislative process.
There’s also no comprehensive federal right to repair law yet, though bills like the REPAIR Act have attracted bipartisan sponsors in Congress, and farm-specific legislation has been introduced as well. Enforcement is another open question, since even where laws exist, it often falls to state attorneys general or private lawsuits to actually hold manufacturers accountable.
The overall trajectory is fairly clear. What started as a complaint about overpriced phone screens has turned into multistate legislation. Farmers and environmental advocates alike are all pulling in the same direction. Whether that adds up to a single national standard anytime soon is still uncertain, but the idea that buying something should come with the ability to fix it has clearly stopped being a fringe argument.
