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 of CoPIRG Foundation, 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.”