Tech companies are trying to neutralize Colorado’s historic right to repair law

Right to reform efforts are Progress in the United States. State legislation in Colorado has driven much of this movement.

Since 2022, Colorado has passed bills that give users the tools, instructions, and legal abilities to repair or upgrade their wheelchairs, farm equipment, and consumer electronics. Similar efforts have spread across the country, with reform bills introduced in every US state and passing in eight of them.

“Colorado has the broadest repair rights in the country,” says Danny Katz, executive director of CoPIRG, the Colorado chapter of consumer advocacy group Pirg. “We should be proud to lead the way.”

Manufacturers tend to be less supportive of right-to-repair efforts, as companies will make more money charging for tools, parts, and repair services than if they were to let people fix things themselves. Some companies have reluctantly agreed to make their products more repairable. Some have begun to oppose new laws aimed at enabling this.

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

The bill amends 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 guaranteed by this law are broad, the new SB26-090 bill aims to “exempt information technology equipment intended for use in critical infrastructure from Colorado’s consumer right to repair laws.”

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

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

Cisco did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment, but at the hearing, a Cisco representative said, “Cisco supports the SB-90. While I appreciate the arguments made in favor of the right to repair, not all digital technology devices are created equal.”

During the hearing, more than a dozen reform advocates from organizations like Pirg, the Repair Association, and iFixit spoke in opposition to the bill. YouTuber and reform advocate Louis Rossman was in attendance. The main problem, reform advocates say, is that the bill deliberately uses vague language to establish control over who can repair their products.

“The issue of ‘IT’ and ‘critical infrastructure’ is as ridiculous as can be,” says Nathan Proctor, leader of Berg’s US Right to Repair campaign. “It sounds scary to lawmakers, but it just means the Internet.”

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