Which states let you legally repair your robot: Texas lands September 1, but Colorado is the one that actually helps

The news, and the catch

Texas HB 2963 takes effect on 2026-09-01. We read the enrolled statute. Section 4 says exactly that, and the word “robot” appears nowhere in the bill — there is no robotics exclusion in the thirteen categories Texas carved out.

Now the catch, and it’s in Section 2 of the act itself:

“Chapter 121, Business & Commerce Code, as added by this Act, applies only to digital electronic equipment that was originally made available for sale in this state by an original equipment manufacturer on or after the effective date of this Act.”

Texas is entirely prospective. The Roomba, Navimow or Go2 sitting in your house right now gets nothing — not on September 1, not ever. Only models a manufacturer first puts on the Texas market on or after that date are covered, and the manufacturer then gets a further full year to make parts and tools available (Sec. 121.051(a)). Realistically, Texas starts to bite in late 2027.

So if you’re asking which state actually lets you repair the robot you already own, the answer isn’t Texas.

It’s Colorado

Colorado’s HB24-1121 has been in force since 2026-01-01, and it is the only law in the country that clears every hurdle at once:

• It’s retroactive — covers equipment first sold or used in Colorado on or after 2021-07-01, so a five-year-old robot qualifies.
• No consumer-only gate. Its definition covers “a hardware product,” and “owner” means “a person” — not “an individual buying for household purposes.”
• No price floor. Texas, California and Connecticut all require a $50 threshold. Colorado doesn’t.
• No turf-and-garden exclusion — which, as you’ll see below, is the trap that kills robot mowers in six other states.
• It bans parts pairing for equipment first sold or used in Colorado after 2026-01-01.

Texas is the newsiest. Colorado is the strongest. Oregon reaches the oldest hardware. If you want to know your rights, find your state in the table.

The nine-state map

Two things most coverage gets wrong. The count is nine, not eight — Kansas HB 2700 was signed in 2026 and is missing from every roundup we checked, because it doesn’t bite until mid-2027. And Connecticut is real but easy to miss: its provision is § 3 of Public Act 25-44, buried inside a consumer-protection omnibus (from Substitute SB 3), which is why iFixit’s own state count omits it.

Separately: Massachusetts and Maine have right-to-repair laws that are automotive only — they do nothing for a robot. Nevada’s 2025 law covers mobility devices (wheelchairs), not consumer electronics. Counts that lump these in with the electronics laws are mixing categories.

One date we won’t print with false confidence. Oregon’s SB 1596 is universally reported as effective 2025-01-01. The primary sources don’t support that: the legislature’s own record says the measure takes effect “on the 91st day following adjournment sine die” — which computes to around June 2024 — and the enrolled bill contains no effective-date section at all. We think 2025-01-01 is a conflation with Oregon’s separate parts-pairing device cutoff, which genuinely is 2025-01-01. Until someone produces a document with a calendar date, the honest statement is: Oregon’s law has been in force since 2024.

Is your robot actually covered? Three tests

Test 1: is it a consumer product? This is where most owners lose.

Six of the nine laws either require the equipment be “sold to a consumer” or that it be “generally used for personal, family, or household purposes.” New York goes further and excludes B2B by name:

“does not include any product sold under a specific business-to-government or business-to-business contract, which is not otherwise offered for sale directly by a retail seller.”

What this means concretely:

If you run a restaurant or a facility, your service robot has no state repair rights in Texas, New York, Washington, Oregon, California or Connecticut. The only laws without a household-use limit are Colorado and Minnesota. (Kansas looks like a third at first glance — its duty runs to “owners” — but its definition of covered equipment is gated to products “sold to a consumer,” so a service robot is out there too.) And the federal backstop doesn’t rescue you either: Magnuson-Moss reaches only a “consumer product,” defined as property “normally used for personal, family, or household purposes.”

This is the single most useful thing on this page, and nobody says it out loud.

Test 2: is it a mower? Then most of the map disappears.

Here’s the genuinely counterintuitive finding. Six states — New York, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Connecticut and Kansas — copied the same off-road-equipment boilerplate that excludes:

“…turf, yard and garden equipment, outdoor power equipment (including portable generators)…”

That language was written with tractors and lawn tractors in mind. It takes robot mowers out as collateral damage. An Automower, Navimow or Landroid owner in New York has no rights under New York’s law.

Texas and Colorado are the only two states that omit it. We read both exclusion lists in full to confirm. Texas’s nearest miss is “powersports vehicle,” which incorporates the state’s off-highway vehicle definition — and every OHV subtype requires seats and excludes machines designed for lawn care. A seatless robot mower isn’t one.

So: a robot mower owner in Texas or Colorado has statutory rights. Almost everywhere else, they don’t. A Texan has more repair rights over their Automower than a New Yorker does.

And it may be worse than a mower carve-out. In Connecticut, Kansas and Minnesota the exclusion is drafted at the entity level rather than the product level — Minnesota’s reads “Nothing in this section applies to manufacturers, distributors, importers, or dealers of any off-road or nonroad equipment.” Read literally, that exempts an outdoor-power-equipment maker across its whole catalogue, not just its mowers. For a Husqvarna or a Worx in those three states, that’s arguably everything they sell. We haven’t seen this tested, and we’d love to be wrong about it.

Test 3: is it a vacuum? Watch the “home appliance” exclusion.

Texas excludes home appliances — but carves small ones back in: “excluding other countertop or stand-alone small appliances.” A robot vacuum is a stand-alone small appliance, so it’s covered.

New York has the same exclusion with no carve-back, listing “any home appliance that has a digital electronic product embedded within it.” Whether a robot vacuum is a “home appliance” under that clause is genuinely unresolved — we’re flagging it as ambiguous rather than guessing. Kansas has the same gap. California, Connecticut, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and Oregon don’t have an exclusion of this shape.

Parts pairing: the fight that actually matters for robots

Robots are full of serialized batteries, paired docks and calibrated LiDAR modules. A law that makes a manufacturer sell you a part but lets them software-lock it is worth much less than it sounds.

• Oregon was first and broadest: for devices first sold or used in the state after 2025-01-01, an OEM may not use parts pairing to prevent installation of a replacement part, reduce functionality or performance, or throw undismissable warnings about unidentified parts. (One sensible exception: a battery’s function may be reduced after a thermal event.)
• Colorado and Washington both ban it for devices first sold or used after 2026-01-01, in near-identical language.
• Minnesota does it obliquely — it’s buried in the definition of “fair and reasonable terms,” which bars requiring “that a part be registered, paired with, or approved by the original equipment manufacturer … before the part is operational.”
• Texas explicitly declined. Sec. 121.052(7)(A) preserves the OEM’s right to require “remote authorization or an Internet connection before an independent repair provider or owner may use a part or tool.” Texas makes them sell you the tool. It does not outlaw the lock.

One Washington detail worth correcting: the introduced version of HB 1483 said 2025-01-01. The enacted statute says 2026-01-01. Don’t cite the bill draft.

What the Texas law actually requires — and its escape hatches

For products it does cover, manufacturers must, within one year of first sale, make available “on fair and reasonable terms to any independent repair provider or to an owner” the documentation, replacement parts and tools needed for diagnosis, maintenance or repair. “Tool” expressly includes software that “provides, programs, or pairs a part” or “calibrates functionality.”

Note that “owner” is defined broadly — “an individual or business entity that owns digital electronic equipment” — so if the product qualifies as a consumer product, a business that owns one still has rights.

The limits:

• No source code. Every one of these laws says so.
• Batteries can be sold pre-assembled with other parts rather than as individual cells.
• A buyout escape hatch: Sec. 121.053 lets a manufacturer refund your purchase price or hand you a replacement instead of supplying parts.
• AG-only, with a cure period. “The attorney general has exclusive authority to enforce this chapter” — after 30 days’ written notice, and curing the violation defeats the action entirely.
• Sec. 121.104. NO PRIVATE RIGHT OF ACTION. You cannot sue. Neither can a repair shop.

One correction, because it’s circulating. Several compliance summaries claim Texas requires documentation for “at least three years” ($50–$99.99) or “at least seven years” ($100+). Those numbers are not in HB 2963. They’re California’s, from Public Resources Code § 42488.2. Connecticut’s are three and five years. Texas has no duration tiers at all — which cuts both ways: no cap, but no affirmative stocking duty either.

The honest part: none of this has ever been enforced

Nine states. Zero enforcement actions.

No state attorney general has publicly brought any enforcement action under any state digital right-to-repair statute — not against a robot manufacturer, not against anyone, from New York’s effective date to today. New York’s AG has issued exactly one release about its law, in January 2024, and it names no company. Two separate 2026 law-firm compliance surveys identify only Deere as a right-to-repair defendant anywhere — and that’s tractors, brought by the FTC and state AGs, not under any of these statutes.

We also checked the FTC’s own case database for iRobot, Ecovacs, Roborock, SharkNinja, Husqvarna, Segway, Unitree and Pudu. No results, on any subject. And a federal court full-text search for robot-vacuum right-to-repair litigation returns nothing.

Eight of the nine are AG-enforced only. Texas and Connecticut expressly kill the private right of action, and Texas hands manufacturers a 30-day cure that ends the case entirely.

Colorado is the exception, and it matters. The legislature’s own summary is blunt: “Failure to comply with the right-to-repair statutes is a deceptive trade practice.” That routes violations into the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, which — unlike the enforcement schemes in every other state on this list — carries a private right of action. Under C.R.S. § 6-1-113(2) a successful plaintiff recovers the greater of $500 or actual damages, trebled where bad faith is shown by clear and convincing evidence, plus costs and attorney’s fees.

So in the one state with the broadest coverage, no price floor, no household gate, no mower exclusion and a pairing ban, you don’t have to wait for an attorney general to care.

Two honest caveats. Colorado courts require that the practice significantly impact the public, not just one buyer — which is a real hurdle, though a manufacturer’s blanket refusal to sell parts to anyone is close to the definition of public impact. And the Act is aimed at consumers; courts have been unreceptive to claims from sophisticated commercial parties, so an independent repair shop’s standing is less certain than an owner’s.

Still: if any of these nine laws gets its first real test, Colorado is where it happens.

Meanwhile, here’s what parts availability actually looks like today. iFixit stocks about 50 parts for Roomba — every one of them a consumable: bags, batteries, brushes, caps, casters, filters, mops, tires. No mainboards, no motors, no sensors, no LiDAR. For Roborock, Ecovacs, Shark robot vacuums, Husqvarna and robot mowers generally, iFixit stocks nothing at all.

And when iFixit tore down a Unitree Go2 in March 2025, it rated the hardware “pretty good, for the most part” — battery removable by hand, motors on labelled connectors — but found the binding constraint wasn’t the design. It was that there’s “a contact form on their website, no direct ordering of parts,” and their attempt to buy spare motors and legs simply went unanswered.

The rights are real on paper and, so far, untested in practice everywhere except potentially Colorado — which is the one state that doesn’t make you wait for a government lawyer to care. That’s not a reason to ignore them. It’s a reason to be the person who tests one.

The federal floor that already applies everywhere

Regardless of your state, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act has protected you since 1975. The operative language, 15 U.S.C. § 2302(c), bans a warrantor from conditioning warranty coverage on using branded parts or service — with no waiver from the FTC, which it essentially never grants.

The precise point, which matters: the statute doesn’t say “warranty void if opened.” It bans conditioning. The FTC supplied the bridge in 2018:

“Absent a Commission waiver … a warrantor claiming or suggesting that a warranty is void simply because a consumer used unauthorized parts or service would have no basis for such a claim.”

The enforcement record, accurately:

• 2018-04-10 — warning letters to six companies (ASUSTeK, HTC, Hyundai, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony), unnamed in the release but legible in the FOIA copy.
• May 2021 — the Nixing the Fix report to Congress, which concluded that manufacturers’ explanations for repair restrictions “are not supported by the record.” (It’s often misdated to 2020.)
• 2021-07-21 — a 5-0 policy statement prioritising repair-restriction enforcement. Its own footnote admits the FTC had brought one Magnuson-Moss case in the previous decade.
• June–July 2022 — orders against Harley-Davidson, MWE Investments (Westinghouse) and Weber, finalised 2022-10-27. ⚠️ These were not fines. No civil penalty, no redress, no disgorgement in any of the three. The “$46,517” figure you’ll see quoted is the maximum future penalty per violation if a company later breaches the order.
• 2024-07-03 — warning letters to eight named companies, including three (ASRock, Zotac, Gigabyte) over “warranty void if removed” stickers.
• 2026-07-08 — the Deere settlement: ten years of supervised parity between farmers, independent shops and Deere dealers, expressly including “reprogramming and ‘pairing’ newly installed electronic parts.” Injunctive only.

There has been no FTC Magnuson-Moss enforcement action since October 2022.

What to actually do

1. Find your state in the table, then run the three tests: consumer product? mower? vacuum?
2. If you’re in Colorado, you have the strongest hand in the country — retroactive to 2021, no price floor, no household gate, no mower exclusion, a pairing ban, and a private right of action you can bring yourself. Use it.
3. If you’re in Texas, understand that September 1 does nothing for the robot you own. It matters for your next one — and when you buy, ask the seller when that model was first offered for sale in Texas.
4. Peel off any “warranty void if opened” sticker anxiety. That claim has been unlawful federally since 1975, in every state, for every robot.
5. Ask in writing, and keep the reply. Outside Colorado these laws are AG-enforced, and an AG needs a paper trail. A refusal email from a manufacturer that won’t sell you a battery is the raw material of the first enforcement action any of these statutes has ever seen.

One last thing worth holding in view: the same year states started mandating parts access, the FCC put foreign-produced robots on its Covered List — which gates the next generation of models rather than the parts supply for this one. Those two trends point in opposite directions, and if you own a robot, both of them are now your problem.