VICTORY! Right to repair bill gets a floor vote, passes out of the Washington State House

Anoth­er North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute pri­or­i­ty bill has received a floor vote ahead of cut-off and will be mov­ing for­ward in the leg­isla­tive process.

House Bill 1392, prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mia Gregerson (D‑33rd Dis­trict: South King Coun­ty), also known as the Fair Repair Act, is the lat­est incar­na­tion of the right to repair bill that NPI and many oth­er orga­ni­za­tions have been sup­port­ing for sev­er­al years. I tes­ti­fied on NPI’s behalf for both this bill and its Sen­ate com­pan­ion back in Jan­u­ary, and it was very heart­en­ing to see it move out of the House and head over to the Sen­ate today.

The premise under­ly­ing HB 1392 is sim­ple: Our elec­tron­ics and small appli­ances are valu­able, and we ought to be able to fix them when they break (or when the bat­ter­ies wear out) with­out being at the mer­cy of orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers who are no longer inter­est­ed in help­ing their cus­tomers fix their old stuff because they’d rather prod them into buy­ing new stuff.

NPI’s polling has found that right to repair is wild­ly pop­u­lar. Over two-thirds of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers we’ve sur­veyed back this leg­is­la­tion, which is sim­i­lar to bills being con­sid­ered in oth­er states. At the fed­er­al lev­el, our new­ly elect­ed Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Marie Glue­senkamp Perez is work­ing on advanc­ing right to repair as a bipar­ti­san cause in Con­gress, which is also very encouraging.

“We’ve been work­ing hard to get this bill passed into law this year,” said Gregerson in a state­ment released by the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus. “Many for­mer oppo­nents of the bill have now shown encour­ag­ing signs of support.”

If enact­ed, cau­cus staff say HB 1392 will “require man­u­fac­tur­ers to make every­thing need­ed to repair lap­tops, tablets, and cell phones avail­able to own­ers and inde­pen­dent shops. Access to parts, tools, and doc­u­men­ta­tion would bring real com­pe­ti­tion back into the repair mar­ket.” The bill will be espe­cial­ly ben­e­fi­cial to peo­ple who “live in rur­al parts in the state who can­not access des­ig­nat­ed repair shops for these devices that are typ­i­cal­ly found only in metro areas.”

The roll call on HB 1392 was as follows:

HB 1392
Elec­tron­ics repair
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
3/4/2023

Yeas: 58; Nays: 38; Excused: 2

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Alvara­do, Bate­man, Berg, Bergquist, Berry, Callan, Cham­bers, Chopp, Cortes, Davis, Dent, Doglio, Don­aghy, Duerr, Enten­man, Fari­var, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Fos­se, Good­man, Gregerson, Hack­ney, Klo­ba, Kretz, Lekanoff, Low, Macri, Mena, Mor­gan, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Peter­son, Pol­let, Ramel, Ramos, Reed, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Rule, Ryu, San­tos, Senn, Shavers, Sim­mons, Slat­ter, Springer, Stearns, Stonier, Street, Tay­lor, Thai, Tharinger, Tim­mons, Walen, Wylie, Jinkins

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Abbarno, Barkis, Barnard, Bronoske, Caldier, Chan­dler, Chap­man, Cheney, Chris­t­ian, Con­nors, Cor­ry, Cou­ture, Dye, Goehn­er, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hutchins, Jacob­sen, Klick­er, Leav­itt, May­cum­ber, McClin­tock, McEn­tire, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Robert­son, Rude, San­dlin, Schmick, Schmidt, Steele, Stokes­bary, Volz, Walsh, Waters, Wilcox, Ybarra

Excused: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Eslick, Hansen

Democ­rats vot­ing against the bill were:

• Dan Bronoske, 28th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict (Pierce County)
• Mike Chap­man, 24th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict (Olympic Peninsula)
• Mari Leav­itt, 28th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict (Pierce County)

Repub­li­cans vot­ing for the bill were:

• Kel­ly Cham­bers, 25th Dis­trict (Pierce County)
• Tom Dent, 13th District
• Joel Kretz, 7th Dis­trict (North­east Washington)
• Sam Low, 39th Dis­trict (Sno­homish, Skag­it Counties)

The House opt­ed to dis­card the Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee’s ver­sion of the bill, revert­ing to the Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion & Busi­ness Com­mit­tee’s ver­sion on the floor.

Chap­man sup­port­ed the bill as amend­ed by the Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion & Busi­ness Com­mit­tee — he signed the major­i­ty report adopt­ing a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion — but curi­ous­ly vot­ed against HB 1392 on final passage.

A slew of Repub­li­can amend­ments were defeat­ed on the floor, with sev­er­al offered by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Walsh. One from Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Cor­ry was accept­ed, which adjusts the lan­guage exclud­ing the auto­mo­tive indus­try from the bill.

Most of the amend­ments appear to have been writ­ten by lob­by­ists who work for com­pa­nies or tech indus­try enti­ties opposed to right to repair, and would have either weak­ened the bill or unnec­es­sar­i­ly cre­at­ed even more carve-outs.

HB 1392 now heads to the Sen­ate for fur­ther consideration.

NPI thanks the bipar­ti­san major­i­ty in the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that sup­port­ed this much-need­ed leg­is­la­tion and devot­ed time to delib­er­at­ing it on a Sat­ur­day floor ses­sion in Olympia.