Colorado’s Anti-Repair Bill Is Dead

A controversial bill in Colorado that would have eliminated some state protections has failed. The bill was intended to right to edit advocates, who saw it as a bellwether of how the tech industry would try to end the sweeping reform laws in the US.

Colorado reform act of 2024, the Right to Buy Repairs to Modern ElectronicsIt began operations in January 2026 and ensures access to the tools and documentation people need to replace and repair electronic devices such as phones, computers, and Wi-Fi routers. A new bill, Cost of SB26-090It would make a difference to the reform protections for “critical infrastructure,” a catchphrase that reform advocates worry can be applied to any technology.

SB26-090 was introduced in Colorado Senate hearing on April 2 and was supported by lobbying efforts from companies such as Cisco and IBM. It went through that listening together. That’s Bill it has passed in the Colorado Senate on April 16. On Monday evening, the bill was discussed in a long, delayed meeting of the Colorado House’s State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee. Many supporters and critics commented on the group. Finally, the bill was shot down in a 7-4 vote and was put on hold indefinitely.

Danny Katz, head of consumer advocacy group CoPIRG, says the fight was a collective one. Speaking against the bill was a group of reform advocates from organizations such as stack, repair.org, iFixit, Consumer Reportsand local businesses and environmental groups such as Blue Star Recyclers, Recycle Colorado, Environment Coloradoand GreenLatinos.

“While we were moving forward with the termination, we had lost,” Katz wrote in an email to WIRED after the hearing. “So, we didn’t take it lightly, and I believe the incredible testimony from a variety of cyber security experts, businesses, reform advocates, reformers, and people who want the right to reform made a big difference.”

Sponsors of the bill, backed by companies like Cisco, cited the potential for cybersecurity as their motivation for changing the law’s language. If companies have to make repair tools available to everyone, the theory goes, what’s to stop bad actors from using those tools to modify complex engineering technology like Internet routers? He added that banning these devices would make them unavailable to criminals who would misuse them. Advocates of the bill argued that companies should be allowed to keep their privacy if they can prove security, though the argument starts to fall apart with little scrutiny.

At one point in the hearing, Democrat Chad Clifford, a Colorado state representative and vice chairman of the House committee who was also a key sponsor of the bill, made a statement that appeared to indicate Cloudflare’s public use. a wall of lava lamps support for online encryption by default, citing as an example the need for cognitive systems to be secure in order to be secure.

“I don’t know why everyone had to have a lamp on the wall to keep the Chinese out of the network, but that’s what they found that worked,” Clifford said. “The way they do this, I believe they have to keep it a secret, even in Colorado.”

The problem with this argument, as cybersecurity experts pointed out at the hearing, is that most hacks don’t happen through a single network or shared machine. They are remote hacks, where the attacker changes in real time, and the people protecting them have to change on the fly without having to worry about getting permission from the company that makes the tools.