John Deere accused of ‘excluding’ right-to-repair language in its manuals

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is pressuring John Deere to update its manuals to better enable customers to repair their tractors. By omitting information about repair rights and pollution control systems, Warren alleges that John Deere could be in violation of the Clean Air Act.

John Deere has been at the center of an ongoing battle over the right to repair, especially as it incorporates more software into farm equipment. Warren’s office contends that the company is making it almost impossible for farmers to fix their own equipment or turn to independent repair shops.

Withholding repair information from its customers in its manuals could also be illegal, Warren writes in a letter sent to John Deere yesterday and shared first with The Verge.

On February 12, 2024, Deere sent a notice to customers alerting them that the company had “recently discovered” that the following statement may be missing from their manuals: “[a] repair shop or person of the owner’s choosing may maintain, replace, or repair emission control devices and systems with original or equivalent replacement parts.”

This exclusion of language informing customers of their rights not only undercuts farmers’ ability to repair their equipment, but may also be illegal. The Clean Air Act, which governs emissions from all mobile sources of air pollution, including tractors and other farm equipment, directs the Environmental Protection Agency to require manufacturers to provide “any and all information needed to make use of the emission control diagnostics system . . . and such other information including instructions for making emission related diagnosis and repairs.” The law specifies that “no such information may be withheld . . . by the manufacturer to franchised dealers or other persons engaged in the repair, diagnosing, or servicing of motor vehicles or motor vehicle engines.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) didn’t provide a response on the record to The Verge when we reached out regarding the allegations Warren makes.

Warren requests that John Deere respond to a list of questions in its letter by October 17th, including whether all of its written materials now comply with federal regulations when it comes to right to repair.

John Deere didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge. “We have and remain committed to enabling customers to repair the products that they buy,” John Deere CTO Jahmy Hindman said in a 2021 Decoder interview. Hindman also discussed emissions controls:

There is, though, this 2 percent-ish of the repairs that occur on equipment today [that] involve software. And to your point, they’re computer environments that are driving around on wheels. So there is a software component to them. Where we differ with the right-to-repair folks is that software, in many cases, it’s regulated. So let’s take the diesel engine example. We are required, because it’s a regulated emissions environment, to make sure that diesel engine performs at a certain emission output, nitrous oxide, particulate matter, etc., and so on. Modifying software changes that. It changes the output characteristics of the emissions of the engine and that’s a regulated device. So we’re pretty sensitive to changes that would impact that. And disproportionately, those are software changes. Like going in and changing governor gain scheduling, for example, on a diesel engine would have a negative consequence on the emissions that [an] engine produces.

John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding with the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) in January of last year that was supposed to make its software, tools, and documentation available so that farmers and independent shops can make their own repairs. The trade group didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge.

By voluntarily agreeing to the MOU, the company actually sought to kill attempts at passing right-to-repair laws, Warren contends. She argues that John Deere hasn’t made good on its commitment anyway, as she cites a July 2023 report by consumer advocacy group US PIRG Education Fund that finds that the company wasn’t providing adequate software tools for people to independently make repairs.

“Rather than uphold their end of the bargain, John Deere has provided impaired tools and inadequate disclosures. In addition to costing farmers time and money, this refusal to provide meaningful right to repair likely indicates that John Deere may be violating the Clean Air Act by restricting repair of its products’ emissions systems,” Warren says.

This isn’t the first time John Deere has been accused of running afoul of the Clean Air Act. The EPA apparently told the company it “believed that a number of their products did not conform to EPA regulations with regard to their emissions warranty statement,” E&E News reported in June. And US PIRG and right-to-repair advocates reportedly urged the EPA to investigate John Deere over potential Clean Air Act violations, Politico reported in 2022.