California Set To Pass ‘Right To Repair’ Reform With Help From… Apple?

California is poised to be the third state in the U.S. (behind New York and Minnesota) to pass right to repair" legislation after the state's Right to Repair Act SB 244 passed 50-0 vote in the Assembly followed by a 38-0 vote in the Senate. Those three states alone comprise roughly 20 percent of all American consumers.

The bill requires hardware manufacturers to make documentation, tools, and other repair essentials available to consumers and independent repair shops at affordable terms. And it passed, in small part, thanks to a last minute push by historically one of the worst offenders in the realm of affordable repair: Apple.

Tinkerers and right to repair activists like the folks at iFixit were unsurprisingly thrilled, noting that if this bill can pass in Big Tech's" backyard, anything is possible in other states:

The era of manufacturers' repair monopolies is ending, as well it should be," said Kyle Wiens, iFixit CEO. Accessible, affordable, widely available repair benefits everyone. We're especially thrilled to see this bill pass in the state where iFixit is headquartered, which also happens to be Big Tech's backyard. Since Right to Repair can pass here, expect it to be on its way to a backyard near you."

Apple has been notoriously shitty on right to repair historically. The company has an obnoxious history of bullying of independent repair shops, making affordable independent repair as difficult as possible, and, initially, lobbying vehemently against any reform (it once tried to claim that if Nebraska passed right to repair legislation it would turn into a mecca for hackers," which was supposed to be derogatory).

With the right to repair movement seeing overwhelming, bipartisan public support, companies like Microsoft and Apple have both started to realize they were swimming upstream. Apple has slowly started rolling out programs that make it easier to repair Apple tech, and in August surprised everyone by announcing that it now supported SB 244.

To be clear other companies (and some policy orgs both Apple and Microsoft are members of) are having significant success watering many of these bills down. New York's bill, which already excluded most of the worst offending industries on this subject (like vehicles, home appliances, farm equipment or medical devices) was comically weakened further by NY Governor Kathy Hochul after passage.

California's bill isn't as weak as New York's, but it's not quite as strong as Minnesota's, in part thanks to certain loopholes:

Though the bill is strong and should make repairs more available for everyone, it allows manufacturers to continue to engage in parts pairing, a practice by which they limit repairs with software blocks. They can also combine parts into expensive assemblies, which makes repairs more expensive."

Consumer protection in general is fairly pathetic in the U.S., and is poised to become even more pathetic once the rightward lurching Supreme Court gets done lobotomizing regulatory authority. But the right to repair movement is a notable exception, and a growing number of companies are realizing that opposing the movement is akin to trying to start a fist fight with a river.