Apple's Repair Restrictions Are Back in Court, and the Reason Matters

Courthouse News reports that a California appeals court has revived a lawsuit accusing Apple of restricting independent iPhone repairs and driving up repair prices. The case is about Apple's repair practices from several years ago, but the reasoning behind the decision is much more interesting than that history.

Two iPhone owners sued Apple after paying the company to replace cracked screens in 2021. They allege that Apple made independent repair artificially difficult through parts pairing, restricted access to parts and tools, warranty practices, proprietary hardware, and other barriers. Apple successfully got the case dismissed. Now California's Sixth District Court of Appeal has reversed that dismissal and allowed the central unfair competition claim to continue.

Apple has not been found liable—only that the consumers have alleged enough of a case to try to prove it. But some of what the court says along the way is notable for right to repair.

This may be the most interesting part. Apple argued that the plaintiffs had not actually gone somewhere else for their repairs and shown that an independent shop would have charged less. The court said that misses their argument. Their theory is that Apple's restrictions suppressed competition throughout the repair market. If that is true, then the injury isn't simply that Apple charged $280 while the shop down the street would have charged $180. It can also be that Apple's control over repair reduced competition, so the $280 price itself was higher than it would have been in a competitive repair market.

That is a much bigger argument. If those practices collectively reduce competition, everyone buying repair services can potentially pay more.

The court put it fairly plainly:

"Consumers needing out-of-warranty repairs have no means of avoiding marketwide pricing dynamics."

That is an important way to think about right to repair. It isn't merely about whether I personally know how to replace an iPhone screen. Competition from people who do know how can make my repair cheaper too.

Parts pairing is part of the case. There can be legitimate security reasons for pairing certain components—a stolen biometric sensor probably should not be something I can casually install into another phone and inherit trust from the original device. But that does not mean every component needs the same treatment. A screen is a screen. A battery is a battery. When software prevents an otherwise functional replacement component from working normally because the manufacturer did not authorize the repair, software has become part of the repair restriction.

That is one of the stranger developments in modern ownership. We used to worry about whether we could physically open something. Now you can open it, replace the broken part correctly, put everything back together, and still have software say: no. Wrong screwdriver, spiritually.

There is another unusual part of the ruling. The repairs happened in 2021. California's Right to Repair Act did not take effect until July 2024. Apple could not have violated that law in 2021, and the appeals court explicitly acknowledges this. But the judges still looked at the later law when considering whether the alleged practices were unfair under California's Unfair Competition Law. The court reasoned that the Legislature later establishing a public policy of fair repair can help inform whether the earlier conduct alleged in this case was unfair. Caveat: this opinion has not been certified for publication, so it generally cannot be cited as precedent. But the reasoning is still worth paying attention to.

I have always thought right to repair gets framed too narrowly as a hobbyist issue. It isn't just about people who want to take their phones apart. I may never replace my own display. I still benefit from someone else being allowed to. The plaintiffs aren't simply arguing Apple wouldn't let us repair our phones. They are arguing Apple's control over who could repair iPhones changed the economics of repair for everyone who owned one. Now they will have an opportunity to try to prove it.

A cracked screen should not turn into a discussion about how much control the manufacturer still has over something you already bought. You bought the phone. Repair should be part of what ownership means.

Read the Courthouse News report.