Tech Companies Are Trying to Neuter Colorado’s Landmark Right-to-Repair Law

Right-to-repair efforts are gaining headway in the US. A lot of that movement has been led by state legislation in Colorado.

Since 2022, Colorado has passed bills giving users the tools, instructions, and legal capabilities to fix or upgrade their own wheelchairs, agricultural farming equipment, and consumer electronics. Similar efforts have rippled out through the country, where repair bills have been introduced in every US state and passed in eight of them.

“Colorado has the broadest repair rights in the country,” says Danny Katz, executive director CoPIRG, the Colorado branch of the consumer advocate group Pirg. “We should be proud of leading the way.”

Manufacturers tend to be less supportive of right-to-repair efforts, as corporations stand to make more money charging for tools, replacement parts, and repair services than if they were to just let people fix things on their own. Some companies have begrudgingly agreed to make their products more repairable. Some have started actively pushing back against new laws intended to enable that.

Today at a hearing of the Colorado Senate Business, Labor, and Technology committee, lawmakers voted unanimously to move Colorado state bill SB26-090—titled Exempt Critical Infrastructure from Right to Repair—out of committee and into the state senate and house for a vote.

The bill modifies Colorado’s Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment act, which was passed in 2024 and went into effect in January 2026. While the protections secured by that act are wide, the new SB26-090 bill aims to “exempt information technology equipment that is intended for use in critical infrastructure from Colorado's consumer right to repair laws.”

The bill is supported by tech manufacturers like Cisco and IBM, according to lobbying disclosures. These are companies that have vested interests in manufacturing things like routers, server equipment, and computers and stand to profit if they can control who fixes their products and the tools, components, and software used to make those upgrades and repairs. They also cite cybersecurity concerns, saying that giving people access to the tools and systems they would need to repair a device could also enable bad actors to use those methods for nefarious means. (This is a common argument manufacturers make when opposing right-to-repair laws.)

“IBM supports right-to-repair policies that empower consumers while protecting cybersecurity, intellectual property, and critical infrastructure,” wrote an IBM spokesperson in an email to WIRED. “Given the critical and often sensitive nature of enterprise-level products, any legislation should be clearly scoped to consumer devices.”

Cisco did not respond to WIRED's request for comment, but in the hearing a Cisco representative said, “Cisco supports SB-90. While it appreciates the arguments offered in favor of the right to repair, not all digital technology devices are equal.”

During the hearing, more than a dozen repair advocates spoke from organizations like Pirg, the Repair Association, and iFixit opposing the bill. YouTuber and repair advocate Louis Rossmann was there. The main problem, repair advocates say, is that the bill deliberately uses vague language to make the case for controlling who can fix their products.

“The ‘information technology’ and ‘critical infrastructure’ thing is as cynical as you can possibly be about it,” says Nathan Proctor, the leader of Pirg’s US right-to-repair campaign. “It sounds scary to lawmakers, but it just means the internet.”

Though not clearly defined in the bill, “information technology” usually means tech like servers and routers. “Critical infrastructure” is language taken from a 2001 federal legislation that defines the term as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”

“I can point out at least five problems with the bill as drafted,” Gay Gordon-Byrne, the executive director at the Repair Association, said during the hearing. “The definition of critical infrastructure is completely inadequate. The definition that has been proposed in this bill is not even a definition.”

Katz argues that the current wording of the bill would cover everything from traditional IT equipment like servers and routers to computers or really any other electronic depending on the situation it is in.

“It leaves it up to the manufacturers to determine which items they will need to provide repair tools and parts to owners and independent repairers and which ones they don't,” Katz says. “This is a bad policy and would be a big step back for Coloradans’ repair rights.”

Repair advocates also say that limiting this kind of repairability is the exact opposite of keeping devices secure. If something goes wrong with a critical piece of technology, the people using it need to fix it and not have to wait for manufacturer approval.

“There’s a general principle in cybersecurity that obscurity is not security,” iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens said in the hearing. “The money that’s behind the scenes, that’s what’s driving the bill.”

The Colorado Labor and Technology committee advanced the bill, but it still needs to go through votes on the Colorado Senate and House floors before going into effect. Those votes may take place as early as next week. Regardless of how the bill goes in the state, it’s likely that manufacturers will continue their push to alter or undo repair legislation in other states across the country.

“This only hardens my resolve,” Proctor says. “We cannot stop until this problem is addressed. In practice everywhere, people need to be able to fix their stuff. This is proof that we have to keep going.”