Right to repair by state: where you can actually fix your own electronics in 2026
There is no national law. There are five state laws with different effective dates, different device lists, and one exemption they all share.
Right-to-repair headlines tend to be written as though a switch was flipped and repair became legal. Nothing like that happened. What exists in 2026 is a patchwork: five US states with consumer electronics repair laws, each with its own effective date, its own definition of a covered device, and its own list of exemptions. Whether you can get a part depends on where you live, what you are fixing, and — more often than anyone admits — on whether the manufacturer has decided to make compliance convenient.
This guide sets out what each law actually requires, where the gaps are, and what your options look like if your state is not on the list.
On this page
The five states, and when each takes effect
Effective dates matter more than passage dates. A law signed in 2024 that takes effect in 2027 does nothing for you today.
| State | In effect since | Broadly covers |
|---|---|---|
| New York | 28 December 2023 | Mobile phones, personal computers, other consumer electronics |
| California | 1 July 2024 | Phones, computers, connected devices, consumer electronics |
| Minnesota | 1 July 2024 | Digital electronic equipment, including phones and computers |
| Colorado | 1 January 2026 | Digital electronic equipment |
| Oregon | 1 July 2027 | Digital electronic equipment |
Colorado's consumer electronics provisions came into force at the start of this year, which is why coverage expanded noticeably in 2026. Oregon's law is passed but not yet operative — if you are in Oregon, you are currently in the same position as a state with no law at all.
The rule of thumb that trips people up
These laws generally apply to devices first sold after a given date, not to everything you own. A six-year-old laptop is usually outside the scope even in a covered state. If a manufacturer refuses a parts request, the age of the device is the first thing to check.
What these laws require of manufacturers
The specific wording varies, but every one of the five laws is built on the same four obligations. A manufacturer selling a covered device in a covered state must make available, to independent repair shops and to device owners, on fair and reasonable terms:
- Parts. The same replacement components its own authorised network uses.
- Tools. Including software tools, where a repair cannot be completed without one.
- Documentation. Service manuals, schematics and diagnostic procedures.
- Firmware and diagnostics. Any updates or keys needed to return the device to working order after a part is replaced.
The phrase carrying the most weight is "fair and reasonable terms". It is also the phrase doing the least work in practice, for reasons covered below.
What they leave out
Every one of the five laws carves out categories. The overlap between them is remarkably consistent:
- Video game consoles. Exempt in all five states. This is the exemption that surprises people most, and it is not an oversight — it was negotiated.
- Medical devices. Exempt, on safety and regulatory grounds.
- Motor vehicles. Handled separately, under a different body of law entirely.
- Energy storage systems. Exempt in several states, including New York, California and Minnesota.
Beyond the named categories, definitions do real work. "Digital electronic equipment" sounds broad, but each statute defines it, and appliances, farm equipment and industrial gear frequently sit outside those definitions even where a consumer would assume otherwise.
Why compliance does not always mean repairable
A manufacturer can satisfy the letter of a repair law and still make repair impractical. Three mechanisms come up repeatedly:
Price
"Fair and reasonable" is not defined as a percentage of the device price. If a screen assembly is offered at a price close to a refurbished replacement device, the part is technically available and the repair is economically pointless. This is legal.
Bundling
Some manufacturers sell a component only as part of a larger assembly. If a failed $4 charging port is only available welded to a $180 mainboard, the obligation to supply parts has been met and the repair has not become cheaper.
Process friction
Account registration, business verification, minimum order quantities and tool rental deposits are each defensible individually. Stacked, they filter out casual repairers effectively enough that no refusal is ever needed.
Parts pairing: the obstacle the laws are still catching up to
Parts pairing is the practice of cryptographically linking a component to a specific device, so that a genuine replacement part harvested from an identical unit produces a warning, a disabled feature, or both, until the manufacturer's software authorises it. A repaired phone might lose face authentication, true-tone display calibration, or battery health reporting — not because the part is wrong, but because it has not been blessed.
Some newer state provisions address pairing directly, requiring disclosure or limiting the practice; older ones do not mention it. This is currently the sharpest edge of the debate, and the area where the practical experience of repairing a device diverges most from what the legislation appears to promise.
If your state has no law
Most Americans are still not covered, and yet most repairs are still possible. Three routes, in the order worth trying:
- The manufacturer's own programme. Several brands run voluntary self-repair or authorised parts programmes that operate nationwide, independently of state law — Apple's Self Service Repair being the best known. These are not charity; they were launched partly to shape the legislation. They also work.
- An independent repair shop. Shops source parts through distributor channels that do not stop at state lines. A shop in a non-covered state can often obtain what an individual cannot.
- Salvage parts. For older devices outside every law's scope, a donor unit bought for parts is frequently the only realistic path — and for pre-pairing hardware, it works fine.
Warranty is not the obstacle you think
In the United States, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act means a manufacturer generally cannot void your whole warranty simply because you had a device repaired elsewhere. It can decline to cover damage that the repair itself caused. Those are different claims, and the difference is worth knowing before you accept a refusal.
Before you start a repair
- Check whether your state is covered today, not whether a bill has passed.
- Check the device's first-sale date against the law's cutoff.
- Check the exemption list for your device category — especially if it is a console.
- Look for the manufacturer's own self-repair programme first. It is often faster than asserting a right.
- Price the part before committing. If the part costs more than half a working replacement, stop.
- Find out whether the component is paired. If it is, budget for the feature you may lose, or use a shop with the authorised calibration tool.
The honest summary: right-to-repair laws have made parts and manuals meaningfully easier to obtain, and they have not yet made repair straightforward. Knowing which of those two things you are up against saves the most time.