Column: Californians deserve the right to repair their electronics — even if Big Tech hates it

With device manufacturers making it difficult or impossible for independent repair shops to fix simple issues, many consumers opt to replace their broken phones. If the right to repair passes in California — not only the nation’s largest economy and most populous state but also home to the tech industry itself — it would be a powerful signal indeed. “A lot of the independent repair shops we talked to,” Kushen says, “there’s a lot of urgency for them.” There are a lot of reasons for this, but a big one is that they simply can’t afford the machines and licenses the big manufacturers now require of repair shops to get certified as authorized — and they can’t get the tools and manuals they need to do the repairs at all. “Tech lobbyists have a huge presence in California,” Elizabeth Chamberlain, the sustainability director of the repair company IFixit, tells me, “and we know that the closer this bill gets to passing, the more they’ll be working overtime.” “Once the bill makes it through the Appropriations Committee, it goes to the Senate floor,” Chamberlain says. VIDEO | 06:16 LA Times Today: Californians deserve the right to repair their electronics — even if Big Tech hates it Watch L.A. Times Today at 7 p.m. on Spectrum News 1 on Channel 1 or live stream on the Spectrum News App.