Why Free-Market Republicans Are Embracing a Surprisingly Green Cause

Several years ago, Louis Blessing’s wife asked for his help replacing the battery in her laptop. An electrical engineer by training, Blessing figured it would be a quick fix. But after swapping out the old battery for a new one and plugging the laptop in, he discovered it wouldn’t charge.

It quickly dawned on Blessing that the laptop recognized he had installed a battery made by a third party, and rejected it. It’s a classic example of a practice known as parts pairing, where manufacturers use software to control how — and with whose parts — their devices are fixed.

“To me, that is a garbage business practice,” Blessing told Grist. “Yes, it’s legal for them to do it, but that is truly trash.” After the failed battery swap, Blessing’s wife wound up getting a new computer.

The business practice that led her to do so may not be legal for much longer. Blessing is a Republican state senator representing Ohio’s 8th Senate district, which includes much of the area surrounding Cincinnati. In April, Blessing introduced a “right-to-repair” bill that grants consumers legal access to the parts, tools, and documents they need to fix a wide range of devices while banning restrictive practices like parts pairing. If Blessing’s bill succeeds, the Buckeye State will become the latest to enshrine the right to repair into law, after similar legislative victories in Colorado, Oregon, California, Minnesota, and New York.

That would mark an important political inflection point for the right-to-repair movement. While most of the states that have passed repair laws so far are Democratic strongholds, bills have been introduced in all 50 as of February. The adoption of a right-to-repair law in deep red Ohio — where Republicans control the state House, Senate, and the governor’s office, and Donald Trump won the last presidential election by more than 10 percentage points — would further underscore the broad, bipartisan popularity of being allowed to fix the stuff you own.

“If something breaks that you can’t fix, that’s just as big of a pain if you live in New York as it is in Nebraska,” Nathan Proctor, who heads the right-to-repair campaign at the U.S. Public Research Interest Group, told Grist.

Expanded access to repair has the potential to reduce carbon emissions and pollution. A significant fraction of the emissions and air and water pollutants associated with electronic devices occur during manufacturing. Extending the lifespan of those gadgets can have major environmental benefits: The U.S. Public Research Interest Group has calculated that if Americans’ computers lasted just one year longer on average, it would have the same climate benefit as taking over a quarter million cars off the roads for a year. By reducing the pressure to buy replacement devices, repair also helps alleviate demand for the world’s finite stores of critical minerals, which are used not only in consumer electronics but also in clean energy technologies.

Blessing gladly acknowledges the environmental benefits of expanded repair access, but it isn’t the main reason the issue matters to him. He describes himself as “a very free-market guy” who doesn’t like the idea of big businesses being allowed to monopolize markets. He’s concerned that’s exactly what has happened in the electronics repair space, where it is common for manufacturers to restrict access to spare parts and repair manuals, steering consumers back to them to get their gadgets fixed — or, if the manufacturer doesn’t offer a particular repair, replaced.

“It’s good for a business to be able to monopolize repair,” Blessing said. “But it is most certainly not pro-free market. It’s not pro-competition.”

Blessing is now sponsoring a right-to-repair bill, called the Digital Fair Repair Act, for the third legislative session in a row. While earlier iterations of the bill never made it out of committee, he feels optimistic about the legislation’s prospects this year, in light of growing support for the right to repair across civil society and the business community. In the past, manufacturers like Apple and Microsoft have vehemently lobbied against right-to-repair bills, but these and other corporations are changing their tune as the movement gains steam.

“I think there’s an appetite to get something done,” Blessing told Grist, adding that more and more device manufacturers “want to see something that puts this to rest.”

Repair monopolies don’t just restrict market competition. They also limit a person’s freedom to do what they want with their property. That’s the reason Brian Seitz, a Republican state congressman representing Taney County in southwestern Missouri, is sponsoring a motorcycle right-to-repair bill for the third time this year.

Seitz first grew interested in the right to repair about four years ago, when a group of motorcyclists in his district told him they weren’t able to fix their bikes because they were unable to access necessary diagnostic codes. A spokesperson for the American Motorcyclist Association confirmed to Grist that lack of access to repair-relevant data is “a concern for our membership.” Some manufacturers are moving away from on-board diagnostic ports where owners can plug in and access the information they need to make fixes, the spokesperson said.

“The person who drives a motorcycle is a certain type of individual,” Seitz said. “They’re free spirits. They love the open road. And they brought to my attention that they weren’t allowed to repair their vehicles. And I couldn’t believe it.”

It’s still early days for Seitz’s bill, which has been referred to the Missouri House Economic Development Committee but does not have a hearing scheduled yet. But a version of the bill passed the House during the last legislative session, and Seitz expects it will pass again.

“Whether or not there’s time to get it done in the Senate, that’s yet to be determined,” he said. The bill died in the Missouri Senate during the last legislative session.

A spokesperson for Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe declined to comment on Seitz’s bill. But if it were to pass both chambers and receive Kehoe’s signature this year, it would be the first motorcycle-specific right-to-repair law in the country. (A 2014 agreement establishing a nationwide right-to-repair in the auto industry explicitly excluded motorcycles.) Seitz believes many of his fellow conservatives would be “very much in favor” of that outcome.

“This is a freedom and liberty issue,” Seitz added.

Personal liberty is also at the heart of a recent white paper on the right to repair by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, or TPPF, an influential conservative think tank. The paper lays out the legal case for Texas to adopt a comprehensive right-to-repair law “to restore control, agency, and property rights for Texans.” Since publishing the paper, TPPF staffers have advocated for the right to repair in op-eds and closed-door meetings with state policymakers.

“Our interest in the right to repair is rooted in a concrete fundamental belief in the absolute nature of property rights and how property rights are somewhat skirted by corporations who restrict the right to repair,” Greyson Gee, a technology policy analyst with the TPPF who co-authored the white paper, told Grist.

In February, Giovanni Capriglione, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives and the chairman of the state legislature’s Innovation and Technology Caucus, introduced an electronics right-to-repair bill that the TPPF provided input on. In March, Senator Bob Hall introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

Early drafts of these bills include some carve-outs that repair advocates have criticized elsewhere, including an exemption for electronics used exclusively by businesses or the government, and a stipulation that manufacturers do not need to release circuit boards on the theory that they could be used to counterfeit devices. The Texas bills also contain an “alternative relief” provision that allows manufacturers to reimburse consumers, or offer them a replacement device, instead of providing repair materials. (Ohio’s bill, by contrast, mandates that manufacturers provide board-level components necessary to effect repairs, and it does not allow them to offer refunds instead of complying.)

Gee says the TPPF has been working with repair advocacy organizations and the bill sponsor to strengthen the bill’s language and is “encouraged by the real possibility of establishing a statutory right to repair in Texas.”

“​​Chairman Capriglione is one of the strongest pro-consumer advocates in the Texas House, and we will continue to work with his office as this bill advances [to] ensure there is a codified right to repair in the state,” Gee added. Capriglione, who represents part of the Fort Worth area, didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment.

Elsewhere around the country, lawmakers across the political spectrum are advancing other right-to-repair bills this year. In Washington state, a bill covering consumer electronics and household appliances passed the state House in March by a near-unanimous vote of 94 to 1, underscoring the breadth of bipartisan support for independent repair. In April, the Senate passed its version of the bill 48 to 1. The House must now vote to concur with changes that were made in the Senate, after which the bill heads to the governor’s desk.

“This legislation has always been bipartisan,” Democratic state representative Mia Gregerson, who sponsored the bill, told Grist. “The ability to fix our devices that have already been paid for is something we can all get behind.” In her five years working on right-to-repair bills in the state, Gregerson said, she has negotiated with Microsoft, Google, and environmental groups to attempt to address consumer and business needs while reducing electronic waste.

Conservative politicians and pundits also acknowledge the environmental benefits of the right to repair, despite focusing on personal liberty and the economy in their messaging. In its white paper arguing for a right-to-repair law in Texas, the TPPF highlights the potential for such legislation to eliminate e-waste, citing United Nations research that ties the rapid growth of this trash stream to limited repair and recycling options.

“Ultimately, the bill itself has to be constitutional. It has to be up to snuff legally,” Gee said. “But it’s certainly an advantage, the environmental impact that this bill would have.”

Blessing, from Ohio, agreed. Right to repair will “absolutely mean less electronics in our landfills, among other things,” he told Grist. “I don’t want to diminish that at all.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/right-to-repair-ohio-missouri-texas-red-states-republican-conservative/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org