I think the more nuanced argument here is that while there are often federal agencies regulating various things, states have long been able to add additional requirements more stringent than the federal ones, so long as they do not conflict with the federal ones.
CA has stricter environmental regulations. Numerous states have stricter minimum wage laws. Labor laws. Etc.
(And yes, these can get challenged in court. In fact, the MA right to repair bill is being challenged presently.)
But these are the same bad-faith arguments (FUD around remote vehicle takeover, which is not required by the MA bill) the voters of MA heard during the election season that this bill was (overwhelmingly) passed during. MA voters do not expect auto-makers to not uphold their federal obligations: MA voters expect them to uphold both.
Sure, but I haven't seen a salient argument that they do conflict yet, until then I'm Hitchen's razor on that; it's just been FUD about people doing remote takeovers of cars and crashing them.
> CA has stricter environmental regulations. Numerous states have stricter minimum wage laws. Labor laws. Etc.
A lot depends on how the federal law is written. Federal law can be written to completely preempt state law in some given area or it can be written to only preempt state law in the specific things in that area that the federal law actually provides rules on.
For wages federal law sets a minimum wage but does not prohibit states from setting their own higher minimum wage.
For many environmental laws federal law is written to completely preempt state law. States in those areas cannot set stricter standards. For some of those, such as car emissions, the federal law completely preempts (which would stop California from having stricter regulations) but the EPA is authorized to issue waivers to allow states to be more strict. There is such a waiver for California that allows them to set their own stricter standards and allows other states to choose to follow the California standard.
The Trump administration revoked California's waiver. (And then when several car companies announced they were going to continue to meet California's standard even if no longer required to do so the Trump administration threatened to sue them for antitrust).
The Biden administration restore California's waiver.
CA has stricter environmental regulations. Numerous states have stricter minimum wage laws. Labor laws. Etc.
(And yes, these can get challenged in court. In fact, the MA right to repair bill is being challenged presently.)
But these are the same bad-faith arguments (FUD around remote vehicle takeover, which is not required by the MA bill) the voters of MA heard during the election season that this bill was (overwhelmingly) passed during. MA voters do not expect auto-makers to not uphold their federal obligations: MA voters expect them to uphold both.