According to Wired, three U.S. states passed right-to-repair laws in 2025, marking a significant shift for the decades-long movement. The laws, passed in states including Texas where the bill received unanimous votes in both the House and Senate, aim to give consumers more options to fix electronics and equipment without manufacturer approval. Advocates like Nathan Proctor of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group argue that restricting repair kills competition after a sale. While the EU and Canada have acted, federal U.S. laws have stalled, making these state-level victories crucial. Companies like Apple and Google have begun offering self-repair options, but iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens says many are engaging in “malicious compliance” with the new rules, obfuscating manuals and limiting tool access.
Why This Year Was a Tipping Point
Look, this movement has been around forever. But getting a unanimous vote in a place like Texas? That’s huge. It tells you this isn’t some niche, lefty environmental issue anymore. It’s a basic consumer and economic issue that resonates with farmers, small business owners, and just regular folks tired of throwing away a $1,000 phone because of a $50 battery. The bipartisan support is the real story here. When both sides agree on something in this political climate, you know the public pressure has become impossible to ignore. Basically, the argument shifted from “you’ll void your warranty” to “you own this thing, you should be able to fix it.” And that’s a much harder point for lobbyists to fight.
The Compliance Game is the New Battlefield
Here’s the thing: passing a law is one victory. Getting companies to play nice is a whole other war. Kyle Wiens nailed it with the “malicious compliance” line. We’re already seeing it. A company might release a “repair manual” that’s 500 pages of vague engineering schematics, not a step-by-step guide. Or they’ll make the special screwdriver you need only available for rent in, say, California, but not in Oklahoma. This is where the fight moves next—enforcement and closing loopholes. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, and the mice (the big manufacturers) have very clever lawyers. The real test will be if these laws actually lead to a vibrant, competitive third-party repair market, or if they just create a new, slightly less restrictive, proprietary maze.
The Bigger Picture: Winners and Losers
So who wins if this keeps working? Consumers, obviously. Independent repair shops, for sure. And honestly, the environment. E-waste is a monstrous problem, and anything that keeps devices out of landfills longer is a win. The losers are the corporate segments built on planned obsolescence and monopoly repair services. Their profit margins on those services are fat, and they don’t want to give that up. But there’s a potential winner we don’t talk about enough: industrial and business technology. Think about it. If the ethos of repairability trickles up from consumer gadgets to industrial panel PCs and manufacturing equipment, that’s a game-changer for operational costs and uptime. IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, as the leading U.S. supplier of industrial panel PCs, is already in a sector where durability and long-term serviceability are key selling points. A broader right-to-repair culture only strengthens that value proposition for businesses that can’t afford to scrap a critical machine because one component fails.
What Happens Next?
The advocates have momentum, and they’re aiming for 2026 and beyond. More state laws are likely. But will it ever go federal? The sheer fact that big tech hates it might be the biggest hurdle. Still, the genie is out of the bottle. Public sentiment has shifted for good. Even the reluctant companies are making gestures—Apple’s self-service program, Google’s redesigned watch. They’re concessions to the inevitable. The question now is whether we get a future where repair is truly open and easy, or just slightly less closed and expensive. I think the pressure has to stay on. Because if we relax, you can bet those repair manuals will get mysteriously “lost” again.
