prior right to repair legislation, who have highlighted the impact repair restrictions have on repair shops that are independent and owned by entrepreneurs from underserved communities.[1] Repair restrictions for some products—such as smartphones—also may place a greater financial burden on communities of color and lower-income Americans.[2] According to Pew Research, Black and Hispanic Americans are about twice as likely as white Americans to have smartphones, but no broadband access at home.[3] Similarly, lower-income Americans are more likely to be smartphone-dependent.[4] This smartphone dependency makes repair restrictions on smartphones more likely to affect these communities adversely.
The pandemic has exacerbated the effects of repair restrictions on consumers. As noted by Pew Research, “The pandemic has made living without a computer harder than ever. Employees are working remotely, kids are going to school via laptop, and grandparents are visiting with their grandkids on screens. At the same time, the pandemic has made it harder to get broken devices fixed, as many big chain stores have ceased offering on-site repairs. As a result, people have been forced to send their devices to authorized repair facilities—often waiting weeks for them to be returned.”[5]
The pandemic also has revealed a drastic shortage in the availability of new laptops for students. An Associated Press examination of the availability of school laptops found that the
- ↑ aftermarketNews Staff, Reps. Towns and Sanchez Call Say Right to Repair Needed to Save Independent, Minority-Owned Repair Shops, (Feb. 16, 2006), https://www.aftermarketnews.com/reps-towns-and-sanchez-call-say-right-to-repair-needed-to-save-independent-minority-owned-repair-shops-jobs/.
- ↑ According to U.S. PIRG, “Repair could reduce household spending on electronics and appliances by 22 percent, which would save an average family approximately $330 per year.” Alex DeBellis and Nathan Proctor, Repair Saves Family Big, U.S. PIRG, 4 (Jan. 2021), https://uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/RepairSavesFamiliesBig/Repair-Saves-Families-Big_USP_Jan2021_FINAL1a.pdf; see also infra note 237.
- ↑ Mobile Fact Sheet, Pew Research Center, (June 12, 2019) https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/#who-is-smartphone-dependent.
- ↑ According to Pew Research: “With fewer options for online access at their disposal, many lower-income Americans are relying more on smartphones. As of early 2019, 26% of adults living in households earning less than $30,000 a year are ‘smartphone-dependent’ internet users—meaning they own a smartphone but do not have broadband internet at home. This represents a substantial increase from 12% in 2013. In contrast, only 5% of those living in households earning $100,000 or more fall into this category in 2019.” Monica Anderson and Madhumitha Kumar, Digital divide persists even as lower-income American make gains in tech adoption, Pew Research Center, (May 7, 2019), https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/07/digital-divide-persists-even-as-lower-income-americans-make-gains-in-tech-adoption/.
- ↑ Elaine S. Povich, Pandemic Drives Phone, Computer ‘Right-to-Repair’ Bills, (Mar. 11, 2021), https://pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/03/11/pandemic-drives-phone-computer-right-to-repair-bills.
fell by 32 percent and Asian business owners dropped by 26 percent. In contrast, the number of white business owners fell by 17 percent.” Claire Kramer Mills, Ph.D., and Jessica Battisto, Double Jeopardy: COVID-19’s Concentrated Health and Wealth Effects in Black Communities, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Aug. 2020), https://www.fedsmallbusiness.org/medialibrary/FedSmallBusiness/files/2020/DoubleJeopardy_COVID19andBlackOwnedBusinesses; See also Lydia DePillis, How the Pandemic Economy Could Wipe Out a Generation of Black-Owned Businesses, Pro Publica (Mar. 4, 2021), https://www.propublica.org/article/the-pandemics-existential-threat-to-black-owned-businesses (stating that “[a]s of 2012—the most recent data the Census Bureau has collected—average annual sales for a Black-owned business came to about $58,000, compared to nearly 10 times that amount for the average white-owned enterprise” and arguing that “years of compounding disadvantage have been exacerbated by the pandemic”).
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