Colorado became the first state in the world to ban parts pairing — the manufacturer practice that locks you out of using third-party components to repair your own devices. The law (HB24-1121) went into effect January 1, 2026. It was, by any reasonable measure, the strongest right-to-repair legislation ever passed.
It lasted about three weeks before the lobbying campaign to gut it began.
What Colorado Actually Passed — And Why It Mattered
Most right-to-repair laws focus on the basics: requiring manufacturers to provide repair manuals, sell spare parts to taking control of your digital life shops, and not void warranties when someone gets their device fixed outside an authorized service center. Colorado’s HB24-1121 did all of that. But it went further in one critical area: it banned parts pairing.
If you’ve ever replaced the battery in a modern iPhone or Samsung Galaxy and seen a warning telling you the new battery “cannot be verified” — that’s parts pairing. Manufacturers encode a cryptographic handshake between components, so the device software only fully trusts parts that came from the factory (or from an authorized dealer at factory prices). Third-party or salvaged parts trigger warnings, degrade functionality, or in some cases disable the device entirely.
Parts pairing doesn’t make your device more secure. It makes you more dependent. It’s a software moat around a hardware ecosystem — the technical equivalent of voiding your warranty every time you take your car to an guide to self-hosting mechanic.
Colorado said: no more. And that was a genuinely big deal.
SB26-090: The Rollback in Disguise
Within weeks of HB24-1121 going into effect, tech lobbyists introduced SB26-090. The bill proposes to exempt “critical infrastructure” from Colorado’s repair protections — meaning devices used in industries like healthcare, energy, financial services, and communications would no longer be covered.
That sounds reasonable until you read how “critical infrastructure” is defined. The definition is broad enough to encompass nearly everything made by companies like Cisco and IBM. And it’s no coincidence that at least $362,735 in disclosed lobbying spending has backed the exemption — from exactly those companies and their trade associations.
The bill cleared committee and is heading to a full vote in the Colorado Senate, then the House.
This is not a fringe industry pushback. It’s a coordinated legislative counterattack using the vocabulary of national security to protect revenue streams that depend on repair monopolies. Understanding this playbook matters — because it will be reused in every other state where repair advocates have won.
Why This Is a Pattern, Not an Outlier
Right-to-repair advocates have been winning at the state level. As of January 2026, more than 26% of Americans are covered by some form of right-to-repair protection. Connecticut and Texas laws take effect later this year, which will push that number past 35%.
But the industry response is evolving. Early opposition tried to kill these bills outright — arguing that repair access created security vulnerabilities or enabled counterfeiting. Those arguments largely failed because they were too easy to rebut.
The newer playbook is more sophisticated: don’t oppose the law, carve it out. Win exemptions for “medical devices,” “enterprise equipment,” “critical infrastructure” — categories defined loosely enough to swallow most of the market. Let the law pass. Then empty it.
Colorado is the test case for whether this strategy works. If SB26-090 passes, every state with a right-to-repair law should expect a similar bill within two sessions.
What’s Actually at Stake for Resilient Modernists
This isn’t an abstract consumer rights debate. The right to repair is infrastructure for self-reliance.
A household that can extend the life of its electronics, swap a battery rather than buy a new device, or take a broken appliance to a local shop instead of the manufacturer — that household is less exposed to supply chain shocks, less dependent on corporate service ecosystems, and more economically resilient.
Parts pairing specifically is worth understanding because it targets the most common, practical repair anyone makes: replacing a battery. On modern iPhones, iPads, Samsung Galaxy devices, and increasingly laptops, a third-party battery triggers software warnings or reduced performance. Manufacturers frame this as a security feature. It is not. It is a pricing mechanism.
When Colorado banned this practice, it made a real, practical difference for anyone who owns one of these devices and wants to keep it running on their own terms.
How to Get Involved Before the Vote
The Colorado SB26-090 vote is imminent. Here’s what you can do:
If you’re a Colorado resident:
- Contact your state senator and representative directly. The most effective messages are short, specific, and personal — explain that you want HB24-1121’s protections kept intact and that SB26-090’s “critical infrastructure” exemption is too broad.
- The Colorado General Assembly’s contact tool is at leg.colorado.gov — find your legislators by address.
Wherever you are:
- Follow the fight at fighttorepair.org and assemblyrequired.co — they’re tracking SB26-090 and running the national organizing effort.
- iFixit’s repair advocacy team (repair.org) tracks state-level legislation and will notify you when your state comes into play.
For the longer game:
- Buy repairable devices. The Fairphone, Framework laptops, and refurbished Thinkpads are all designed with repair in mind. Every purchase is a signal.
- Learn basic repair. iFixit’s free guides cover most common repairs. The skill is low-barrier and genuinely useful.
The Bigger Picture
The outcome in Colorado will set a precedent. Either the strongest right-to-repair law in the world survives industry pressure — or it becomes a cautionary tale about what happens when you win a law but lose the implementation fight.
For anyone building a more self-reliant life, the ability to fix what you own is not a luxury or a hobbyist interest. It is a foundational capability. The same logic that leads us to grow food, learn first aid, or generate our own power applies here: dependency on a single point of failure is a vulnerability. Repair rights reduce that vulnerability.
The $362K spent trying to roll back Colorado’s law is a reminder that the people who profit from your dependency will spend real money to maintain it. The counter-move is to stay informed, stay organized, and show up when it counts.
The vote is coming. This is when it counts.
Sources: Techdirt, Fight to Repair, Assembly Required, Yahoo News, PIRG