The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday sued Deere & Company, a leading manufacturer of agricultural equipment, accusing it of unfairly preventing farmers from repairing its equipment themselves or through independent shops, driving up costs for the farmers.
The lawsuit represents a notable sign of support from the federal government for a grass-roots “right to repair” movement that has long sought legislation to require companies, especially those that make tech gadgets using computer chips, to remove proprietary restrictions on repairs.
“Illegal repair restrictions can be devastating for farmers, who rely on affordable and timely repairs to harvest their crops and earn their income,” Lina Khan, the chair of the F.T.C., said in a statement announcing the lawsuit, which the agency filed alongside the attorneys general of Illinois and Minnesota.
The company, known for its green-and yellow John Deere products, has become more heavily reliant on computerized components over the past few decades. Amid this shift, it has taken steps to ensure that only its authorized dealers can have access to a software tool necessary for many agricultural equipment repairs, according to the F.T.C.’s lawsuit, which aims to halt what the agency views as anticompetitive conduct.
In opposing right-to-repair laws, which have passed in several states, manufacturers have argued that allowing access to software could raise safety concerns and risk intellectual property theft.
Deere did not immediately address requests for comment on the lawsuit. On Tuesday, the company said it was taking additional steps to bolster customers’ ability to repair their equipment.
“As our equipment has become more technologically advanced, so too have the repair tools needed to advance customer capabilities,” said Denver Caldwell, the vice president of customer support.
The F.T.C.’s complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, represents a final push in the Biden administration’s broader efforts to make repairs less costly and time consuming. In a 2021 executive order to promote competition across the U.S. economy, President Biden called on the F.T.C. to prevent equipment makers from limiting people’s ability to repair items themselves, or at third-party shops.
Ms. Khan, during her tenure at the helm of the F.T.C., has elicited intense backlash from the business world for her efforts to scale back the power of some of America’s biggest corporations, from Big Tech to grocery chains. The agency has targeted several companies’ repair practices, including those of Harley-Davidson, which in 2022 agreed to settle an F.T.C. case accusing it of illegally restricting buyers’ repair rights.
In 2023, facing pressure from farmers and advocates, Deere signed an agreement with the American Farm Bureau Federation, promising to provide farmers and independent shops with the tools and information needed to service the company’s equipment. But critics have argued that those steps did not go far enough.
“Basically, it allowed John Deere to say we agreed to do these things, but there’s no enforcement that required them to do those things,” said Gay Gordon-Byrne, the executive director of the Repair Association, a trade group that has lobbied for right to repair legislation for over a decade. “Farmers are finding out that it’s useless.”
The five-member F.T.C. voted 3-2 in favor of suing Deere, with the two Republican commissioners dissenting — including Andrew Ferguson, who has been chosen by President-elect Donald J. Trump to succeed Ms. Khan. How the suit will fare under the incoming Trump administration remains to be seen.
Michael Carrier, a law professor at Rutgers University who focuses on antitrust, said there had not been much antitrust enforcement in the agriculture industry to date, making it hard to predict where the Trump administration’s regulators might land. It’s unclear, he said, whether the lawsuit against Deere would have been filed under Mr. Trump’s F.T.C.
“Nonetheless, it is now going to be underway in the courts,” Mr. Carrier added. “And right to repair is not a strictly partisan issue.”