Automakers Sue To Kill Maine's Hugely Popular 'Right To Repair' Law (techdirt.com) 41
Maine's overwhelmingly popular right-to-repair law is under attack by automakers through lawsuits and lobbying efforts aimed at weakening or delaying enforcement. While the law remains in limbo due to industry influence and legal challenges, broader enforcement issues persist across multiple states, with corporations often ignoring right-to-repair laws despite their legal passage. Techdirt reports: A little over a year ago, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) to pass a new state right to repair law designed to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to consumers and third-party independent repair shops. But as we've seen with other states that have passed right to reform laws (most notably New York), passing the law isn't the end of the story. Corporate lobbyists have had great success not just watering these laws down before passage, but after voters approve them. They've also been swarmed by coordinated industry lawsuits and falsehood-spewing attacks.
Maine's popular right to repair law just took effect after a year of hashing out the fine details, but the bill's still being changed as the state tries to sort out enforcement. Large automakers have been looming over that process to try and weaken the law. But the Alliance For Automotive Innovation also just filed a new lawsuit saying the law isn't fully cooked and therefore violates the law: "This is an example of putting the cart before the horse. Before automakers can comply, the law requires the attorney general to first establish an 'independent entity' to securely administer access to vehicle data. The independent entity hasn't been established. That's not in dispute. Compliance with the law right now is not possible."
Maine's popular right to repair law just took effect after a year of hashing out the fine details, but the bill's still being changed as the state tries to sort out enforcement. Large automakers have been looming over that process to try and weaken the law. But the Alliance For Automotive Innovation also just filed a new lawsuit saying the law isn't fully cooked and therefore violates the law: "This is an example of putting the cart before the horse. Before automakers can comply, the law requires the attorney general to first establish an 'independent entity' to securely administer access to vehicle data. The independent entity hasn't been established. That's not in dispute. Compliance with the law right now is not possible."
For future bills controlling corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
You need to add a clause to these bills re-asserting state sovereign immunity and withdrawing consent of the government to be sued by corporations the law applies to. The companies notoriously abuse the court system to obstruct.
On most matters states are immune to being sued, so I am not sure why this is tolerated to allow companies to push back against regulations like so. Write a statute in consumer protection laws like this restoring the government's Immunity so that the courts cannot be used to obstruct implementation.
Re:For future bills controlling corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone can challenge the constitutionality of a law; you can't legislate your way around that.
But, I think that if a law is approved by a majority of voters, and it is challenged by corporations (not private individuals) and the law is upheld as constitutional... then the corporations should be on the hook for 10x the legal fees spent to defend the law.
Re: (Score:2)
Learn to read.
Re:For future bills controlling corporations (Score:4, Insightful)
On most matters states are immune to being sued, so I am not sure why this is tolerated to allow companies to push back against regulations like so.
Companies were given human rights on the back of a rights bill intended for black folk in America in the 1950s.
The companies notoriously abuse the court system to obstruct.
This is exactly correct, how corporation use their ill gotten rights thus subverting the intent of a bill designed to apply to actual human beings.
You need to add a clause to these bills re-asserting state sovereign immunity and withdrawing consent of the government to be sued by corporations the law applies to.
Simply remove their Limited liability protections under law and allow the impact of any legal action against the company to affect the shareholders. Exposing them to their true liability would disincentivize these behaviors.
Write a statute in consumer protection laws like this restoring the government's Immunity so that the courts cannot be used to obstruct implementation.
Simpler to remove their ability to expand their portfolio and change their charter. If they are going to gouge the consumers they serve then they don't have any right to use those techniques to gouge consumers in other markets.
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Companies were given human rights on the back of a rights bill intended for black folk in America in the 1950s.
Can you expand on this? Was there a specific lawsuit, or law written to which you're referring? I don't disagree with you, but I've never heard of this, so I want to read further.
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The case was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886)
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The case was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886)
Thanks.
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You need to add a clause to these bills re-asserting state sovereign immunity and withdrawing consent of the government to be sued by corporations the law applies to. The companies notoriously abuse the court system to obstruct.
On most matters states are immune to being sued, so I am not sure why this is tolerated to allow companies to push back against regulations like so. Write a statute in consumer protection laws like this restoring the government's Immunity so that the courts cannot be used to obstruct implementation.
Í don't like to throw the word around, but you are literally asking for fascism. FUCK THAT.
Re: (Score:2)
Please explain what your definition of fascism is because it sounds an awful lot like you're defining it as, "I don't like it, therefore it's fascism."
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Í don't like to throw the word around, but you are literally asking for fascism. FUCK THAT
No. I am asking for a restoration of how regulation of corporations used to work in the United States before the 1960s.
This is fundamental legal concept to our republic which was enshrined in several hundreds of years precedent. The sovereign in general is immune. There is no right to sue your own government except in very limited circumstances. The reasonable circumstances would essentially be direct the
Such a radical law! (Score:5, Funny)
People actually reparing their own cars! It is practically Communism! and has never happened before in the US!
Suggestion for California (Score:2)
California: Pass a law limiting the amount on electrical wiring in a vehicle to X pounds per vehicle to limit the amount of e-waste built into each vehicle.
They passed a law to limit the amount of electricity used by DVD players long ago
California could do the consumers a favor by encouraging vehicle purchasing choice by requiring passenger and light truck (2 ton or less) vehicle manufacturers to produce a stripped down ICE vehicle in 5 years for sale in California.
The current mess of ever more computers, e
Net outcome desired (Score:2)
Simpler cars which regular people can work on and fix, cars that last a lot longer.
Inflation adjusted prices for trucks as of 2020 https://www.thedrive.com/news/... [thedrive.com]
Notice how even the 1980 Ford F150 is inflation adjusted 66% of the price of a 2020 model?
1948 Ford F1 (First Generation): $1,279 – $13,836.62
1953 Ford F100 (Second Generation): $1,362 – $13,128.14
1956 Ford F100 (Third Generation): $1,577, – $
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Simpler cars which regular people can work on and fix, cars that last a lot longer.
Cars with worse entertainment and climate systems, cars which are less safe, cars with worse performance, reliability, and gas mileage. Cars which are larger.
It's all a tradeoff. Personally, I don't know enough about engines to even consider fixing a car made in 1970 let alone one built today. Given that car owners have voted with their wallets, I don't think I'm alone.
That said, one could blame the gummint. Car engines started to get complicated (and engine bays more crowded) when we tightened fuel and pol
Plutos gotta (Score:1)
...crat
Important lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
If corporations or the rich protest against a law, it's usually a good law.
Re: Important lesson (Score:2)
But big corporations and the ultra-rich are able and willing to use as much force as necessary, even to the point of murdering people, as a Jacobin article pointed out, to protect their profits.
They will win too (Score:5, Interesting)
While we were distracted by that nonsense along with the usual tribalism that divides the working class the upper class was busy taking control of our judicial system. I don't think there's anyone here who's paying any attention who wouldn't say the supreme Court isn't openly corrupt. I mean Clarence Thomas has a luxury motor coach bought for him by a billionaire and every Republican on that court has gone on multimillion-dollar vacations paid for by the upper class.
I don't see any sign of us learning either. Exit polls from 2024 showed moral panics were a major concern for voters.
Re: (Score:2)
While moral panics contain the inevitable "I'm a victim" and "world owes me" self-pity, the behaviour is closer to the blind loyalty of a cult. That is, moral panics are a band-wagon, and everyone wants 15 minutes of fame (or something similar). Democracy and 'small government' means, once a corporation/oligarch generates a critical mass of sympathizers, the politicians will comply.
In the recent murder of an insurance CEO that didn't occur, even after weeks of propaganda.
DARVO (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
[Trump] defies shame and legal constraints in order to show his capacity to do so, which displays to the world a shameless sadism.
The exhilarations of shameless sadism incite others to celebrate this version of manhood, one that is not only willing to defy the rules and principles that govern democratic life (freedom, equality, justice), but enact these as forms of “liberation” from false ideologies and the constraints of legal obligations. An exhilarated hatred now parades as freedom, while the freedoms for which many of us have struggled for decades are distorted and trammeled as morally repressive “woke-ism”.
The sadistic glee at issue here is not just his; it depends on being communicated and widely enjoyed in order to exist – it is a communal and contagious celebration of cruelty. Indeed, the media attention it garners feeds the sadistic spree. It has to be known and seen and heard, this parade of reactionary outrage and defiance. And that is why it is no longer a simple matter of exposing hypocrisy that will serve us now. There is no moral veneer that must be stripped away. No, the public demand for the appearance of morality on the part of the leader is inverted: his followers thrill to the display of his contempt for morality, and share it.
Judith Butler, The Centre for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley, USA.
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You can't redefine a term to make it seem more-acceptable when your chosen faction intends to pack courts in the future.
Packing a court means appointing more seats to a judicial panel so as to fill them with ideologically-aligned judges without waiting for vacancies. It does not mean appointing an ideologically-aligned judge to a vacant seat. When you win an election, you may gain the power to appoint judges as you see fit, assuming the office carries that responsibility. Packing a court undermines the wi
Re: (Score:2)
At this point Hunter could be sold as a brand of fire starter for BBQ grills because thereâ(TM)s that much smoke.
What are you smoking, exactly? [nbcnews.com]
Where there's smoke (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
At this point Hunter could be sold as a brand of fire starter for BBQ grills because thereâ(TM)s that much smoke.
What are you smoking, exactly? [nbcnews.com]
What am I smoking you ask? Apparently the same shit Ukrainian energy executives smoke when they hire crackheads to sit on energy Boards. But don’t let those facts get in the way of the fall guy who was strung up on tax evasion until he tried (and failed) to cover for Biden corruption.
Bribery payments made or not. Go ahead. Explain to me why Hunter fucking Biden, a dishonorably discharged crackhead was working in the same country that his father ended up funneling billions in war funds to years late
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Nobody with two brain cells and any appreciation for facts or history is going to take your "crime family" shit seriously while you've got a Trump in the white house. His family is openly criminal.
Re: They will win too (Score:2)
>We've been letting procorporate politicians pack the courts for going on 50 years.
More like you have been forced to let them.
Manufacturers are going the wrong way (Score:2)