A Decade of Repair Access: Deere Settles the FTC's Right-to-Repair Antitrust Case

The Federal Trade Commission, together with five states, has secured a settlement in its antitrust lawsuit against farm equipment manufacturer Deere & Company that requires the company to give farmers and independent repair providers the same repair resources it has long reserved for its own authorized dealer network.DOCUMENTED

The settlement resolves a joint lawsuit filed in January 2025 by the FTC and the attorneys general of Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, which alleged Deere unlawfully restricted the ability of farmers and independent technicians to repair John Deere tractors, combines, and other equipment.DOCUMENTED

What the original lawsuit alleged

The FTC and the five states alleged that Deere's increasingly software-dependent farm equipment required a diagnostic tool that Deere made available only to its network of authorized dealers, forcing farmers to rely on those dealers for repairs even when an independent shop might be cheaper, closer, faster, or more trusted.DOCUMENTED "By making this tool available only to Deere dealers, Deere forces farmers to turn to Deere dealers for critical repairs rather than complete the repairs themselves or choose an independent repair provider," the complaint alleged.DOCUMENTED

Deere also builds engines and equipment for the forestry, landscaping and construction industries, meaning the alleged repair restrictions extended beyond farming into those adjacent markets as well.REVIEWED

What the settlement requires

Under the stipulated order filed in the U.S. District Court in Illinois, Deere must, for the next 10 years and under the supervision of the FTC and the plaintiff states, provide farmers and independent repair providers with the same equipment repair resources — including applicable software capabilities — that it currently provides to its own authorized dealers.DOCUMENTED The order also requires that when Deere rolls out a new repair capability to more than half of its dealer network, it must make that capability available to independent providers and equipment owners as well, preventing the company from selectively modernizing its dealer network while leaving independent repair access frozen at an older technical baseline.REVIEWED Dealers are barred from penalizing customers who choose to repair their own equipment or use an independent shop instead of an authorized dealer.REVIEWED

Deere must also pay $1 million collectively to the five participating states to cover antitrust enforcement costs, and will remain under compliance oversight from the FTC and the states for the full 10-year term.REVIEWED

Officials' and advocates' statements

FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson, joined by Commissioner Mark R. Meador in a public statement announcing the settlement, framed the resolution as restoring competition by ensuring farmers can repair their own equipment or turn to independent providers rather than being confined to Deere's authorized network.DOCUMENTED

Montana Farmers Union President Walter Schweitzer, whose organization has pushed for right-to-repair reforms for more than a decade, called the settlement "monumental," saying farm groups had long advocated that equipment manufacturers be required to provide the tools needed to diagnose and repair their own machinery.REVIEWED

Under the order, any repair capability Deere gives to more than half its dealer network must also be made available to independent shops and equipment owners — closing the gap that let dealer-only tools quietly become the default.

A second settlement in the same year

The FTC settlement marks the second right-to-repair resolution Deere has reached in 2026, following a separate $99 million class-action settlement with farmers in April of that year.REVIEWED The two settlements address related but distinct harms: the earlier class action compensated farmers financially for costs already incurred, while the FTC's antitrust settlement instead restructures Deere's ongoing repair-access practices going forward, aiming to prevent the same restrictions from continuing rather than simply paying for past harm.REVIEWED

Deere's response

In its own public statement following the announcement, Deere characterized the agreement as reinforcing its continued investment in more flexible repair options, emphasizing increased access and transparency for customers, and framing the settlement as formalizing a commitment to expanding diagnostic and repair-tool access that the company says it had already been pursuing.REVIEWED

What farmers should expect going forward

For equipment owners, the most immediate practical change is access: independent repair shops and individual farmers should be able to obtain the same diagnostic software and technical manuals previously reserved for Deere's authorized dealer network, on terms the order describes as fair and reasonable.REVIEWED Because the settlement runs for a full decade under direct FTC and state supervision, compliance monitoring — rather than a one-time policy change — is likely to be the central mechanism determining whether the promised access materializes as equipment models continue to evolve.REVIEWED

The broader right-to-repair landscape

The Deere case has functioned as a bellwether for right-to-repair advocacy well beyond agriculture, since heavy equipment manufacturers across multiple industries have adopted similar diagnostic-software gatekeeping models as their machines have grown more computerized.REVIEWED The FTC itself has been active on right-to-repair policy well before this settlement, having testified in support of state right-to-repair legislation in California and Colorado, filed comments with the U.S. Copyright Office on repair-related exemptions, and warned companies more broadly about warranty practices that improperly discourage consumers from seeking independent repairs.REVIEWED

What distinguishes the Deere settlement from that earlier advocacy work is enforceability: rather than a policy statement or a comment letter, the stipulated order is a court-filed judgment with a fixed 10-year term, direct oversight by the FTC and five state attorneys general, and specific triggering conditions — such as the requirement tied to dealer-network rollout thresholds — that give regulators concrete benchmarks to check compliance against rather than a general commitment to "improve" repair access.REVIEWED Advocacy groups have pointed to the order's structure as a possible template for future right-to-repair settlements in other equipment-heavy industries facing similar complaints.REVIEWED

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