The right to repair electronics became law in Texas on September 1, requiring manufacturers to provide parts, tools, and manuals so residents can fix phones and laptops instead of discarding them.
The Texas Right to Repair Act, known as HB 2963, took effect last month, granting residents a legal right to fix many of the products they already own. Under this law, manufacturers of covered devices must give consumers and independent repair shops access to the same parts, tools, and repair manuals that company-authorized shops have always received.
The legislation passed the state legislature with striking unanimity, clearing the House 130-0 and the Senate 31-0. Texas now becomes the ninth state in the nation to guarantee right to repair electronics protections for consumers, joining California, Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and Washington.
Environment Texas Executive Director Luke Metzger noted that fixing a phone or laptop in Texas has become significantly easier under the new framework. For years, manufacturers made independent repair difficult by withholding the parts, tools, and documentation people needed, often forcing consumers into expensive authorized repairs or premature replacement purchases. Right to repair electronics now ensures Texans have what they need to fix devices they already own, reducing toxic electronic waste while saving consumers and boosting local repair shops.
The law covers phones, laptops, tablets, cameras, and speakers, though it excludes video game consoles, home appliances, medical devices, motor vehicles, farm equipment, and industrial or aerospace equipment. Under its terms, manufacturers of consumer electronics costing more than $50 wholesale must offer documentation, tools, and replacement parts on fair and reasonable terms with non-discriminatory pricing. Requirements scale with device cost: manufacturers must retain and provide repair documentation for three years after a product’s introduction for items priced between $50 and $99.99, extending to seven years for products priced $100 or higher.
TexPIRG’s Right to Repair Campaign senior director Nathan Proctor framed the change in straightforward terms, noting that fixing something broken represents basic common sense. With Texas’s addition, more than one-third of Americans now live in a state offering right to repair electronics protections, marking substantial national momentum for a policy movement that gained little traction just a few years earlier.
The environmental stakes behind this legislation are considerable. TexPIRG estimates Texas generates roughly 621,000 tons of electronic waste annually, much of it consisting of old phones, laptops, and tablets discarded simply because repair proved too expensive or too difficult to access. This waste frequently ends up in landfills, where toxic materials including lead and mercury can leach into surrounding soil and water, threatening the health of nearby communities, wildlife, and ecosystems.
Right to repair electronics aims to reduce the roughly 621,000 tons of e-waste Texas generates annually, much of it containing toxic materials like lead and mercury that can leach into soil and water when devices are discarded rather than repaired. Photo by RETURN E-Waste on Pexels.
Metzger connected the legislation directly to this waste problem, noting that expanded repair access means reduced waste overall. When the bill passed the previous year, advocates specifically pointed to Texas’s e-waste burden as exactly the kind of toxic problem this legislation was designed to address, a solution now formally written into state law.
Right to repair electronics in Texas drew support from an unusually broad political coalition, uniting Environment Texas and TexPIRG alongside the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, Repair.org, and independent repair shops across the state. This cross-ideological alignment reflects how repair access increasingly appeals to both environmental advocates concerned about waste and consumer-rights groups focused on cost savings and market competition.
Environment Texas and TexPIRG indicated they will continue pushing for robust enforcement of the law’s provisions, while advocating for future legislation extending right to repair protections to additional product categories currently excluded, including home appliances and medical devices. This incremental expansion mirrors patterns in other states, where initial consumer electronics legislation often serves as a foundation for broader repair rights covering more product types over time.
As more states adopt similar frameworks, right to repair electronics is steadily shifting from a niche policy concept into mainstream consumer protection, driven by a straightforward proposition that resonates across the political spectrum: people who own a device should have a genuine path to fixing it, rather than facing pressure toward premature disposal and replacement simply because manufacturers control access to essential repair resources.
