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Student Opinion: “Right to Repair” Laws Should Be Priority for Lawmakers, Consumers

By: Riley Van Dyke, senior LHS journalism staff writer on April 16, 2025

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In the modern-day tech industry, many repair companies are finding it increasingly difficult for them to continue to repair consumer electronics. 

This is because the manufacturing industry is prioritizing profits over user repairability. We should be pushing for more ‘rights to repair’ laws. The reasons that consumers and repair shops should have the right to repair electronics are numerous. 

First off, this affects the environment due to electronics getting thrown away over things that should be able to be simply fixed, like bad batteries or screens. This creates more e-waste that releases pollutants into the ground and air. The batteries not being properly disposed of, creating these problems. This also means most computers are starting to become “disposable” in the sense that you use it for 3-5 years and then throw it away because it unable to be repaired.

 We should be pushing more rights to repair with restrictions. For example, the European Union made it so that tech like phones and laptops need to start selling replacements to the public by 2027. While this is good, it has a major flaw. When they implemented it, they had no regulations on it, so the replacement parts can cost as much or more than getting a new device. This does not encourage consumers to repair their products. Second is that it costs the consumer way more money than saving the device and repairing it themselves or with a repair company. We should be pushing for consumers to be able to keep the device for 5+ years and just repair or upgrade it when it needs it. This can benefit America because it will help the average consumer save hundreds or even thousands of dollars. This will also reduce e-waste and the rapid depletion of precious minerals needed to create today’s technology.

Unfortunately, the majority of today’s big tech companies are choosing profit over common sense and ethics. This is why we need to prioritize new laws that give the consumer the right to repair our own products.