Right to Repair Now Covers 1 in 4 Americans. The Loophole That Remains
Six state laws took effect Jan. 1, pushing repair protections past a quarter of the country. But a software trick called parts pairing shows how much control manufacturers still keep.
One in four. That's the share of Americans who, as of Jan. 1, live in a state where fixing your own laptop, phone or wheelchair without the manufacturer's permission is no longer just tolerated — it's a legal right.
Six new right-to-repair laws took effect at the start of the year across five states, according to the consumer advocacy group PIRG, pushing the population covered by an enforceable electronics repair law to 25.75%. By fall, once laws already passed in Connecticut and Texas kick in, that figure climbs past 35%.
The number is the headline. The mechanism underneath it is the actual story, and it has a name most shoppers have never heard: parts pairing.
What the new laws actually require
Right-to-repair statutes force manufacturers to sell the same parts, tools and repair manuals to independent shops and device owners that they already give their own "authorized" technicians. Five states got there first on consumer electronics — New York, California, Minnesota, Oregon and Colorado — and this January added a second wave layered on top, mostly extending coverage to wheelchairs and mobility devices.
| State | What changed | Effective |
|---|---|---|
| Oregon | Wheelchair repair rules added to its existing electronics law | Jan. 1, 2026 |
| Nevada | New wheelchair right-to-repair law | Jan. 1, 2026 |
| Washington | Two new laws: consumer electronics and wheelchairs | Jan. 1, 2026 |
| Connecticut | Electronics right-to-repair law | July 2026 |
| Texas | Electronics right-to-repair law | September 2026 |
Oregon's original electronics law, though, is the one worth understanding, because it was the first in the country to directly ban "parts pairing" — and that ban is why the state keeps showing up in every subsequent fight.
Parts pairing: the loophole a law can close on paper but not always in practice
Here's the trick. A phone or laptop ships with a serial number baked into a part — a battery, a screen, a camera module — that's cryptographically linked to that specific device by the manufacturer's software. Swap in a replacement part, even a brand-new, manufacturer-made one pulled from another unit of the same model, and the device can refuse to fully recognize it. Some features quietly stop working. Some throw persistent warnings. Some just brick.
It isn't a manufacturing defect. It's a deliberate software gate, and it lets a company hand a state's legislature exactly what the law demands — the part, the tool, the manual — while keeping a remote kill switch on whether that part actually functions once it's installed.
Oregon's 2024 law was the first to explicitly outlaw the practice for consumer electronics. Colorado's HB24-1121, which took effect at the start of this year, followed with its own parts-pairing ban. Most of the other repair laws on the books, including New York's and California's, don't touch it at all — which is why "25.75% of Americans have a right-to-repair law" and "25.75% of Americans can freely swap a battery" are two different claims.
"Here, there and everywhere — people just want to fix their stuff. Americans are fed up with all the ways in which manufacturers of everything from toasters to tractors frustrate or block repairs, and lawmakers are hearing that frustration and taking action."
Nathan Proctor, PIRG's senior right-to-repair campaign director
New York's law, the Digital Fair Repair Act, is instructive on how much a state can get right and still leave gaps. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed it in December 2022, and it applies to digital electronic equipment manufactured after July 1, 2023 — meaning anything sold before that date, or any part locked with pairing software, sits outside its protection entirely. California's SB 244, signed the following year, requires manufacturers to make parts available for three years on products under $50 and seven years on anything over $100. Useful windows, but neither law reaches into the firmware.
Why this keeps moving through statehouses instead of Congress
There's no federal right-to-repair law, and there isn't likely to be one soon, so the fight plays out state by state, county fair by county fair, one bill at a time. Legislation has now been filed in all 50 states over the past decade, per iFixit, the repair-guide company that's become the movement's de facto research arm. Most of those bills die in committee. The ones that survive tend to share a pattern: a narrow consumer-electronics bill passes first, then advocates come back a session or two later to patch the parts-pairing hole once the manufacturer lobbying has cooled off.
That's roughly the Colorado playbook — an agricultural right-to-repair law for tractors first, then wheelchairs, then electronics with the parts-pairing language attached once the template existed. Oregon ran a similar sequence in reverse, landing the pairing ban in its first electronics bill and adding wheelchairs afterward.
For consumers, the practical test isn't "does my state have a right-to-repair law" — it's whether that law reaches the software, not just the hardware. Oregon and Colorado residents can, in theory, replace a paired part and expect it to keep working at full function. Everyone else in the 25.75% has a legal right to buy the part. Whether it works once it's in the device is still, in more states than not, up to the company that made it.
