Consumer Protection · Lemon Law
Lemon Law by State
How many repair attempts, and how many days out of service, before your car is presumed a lemon — plus whether used cars are covered. Every figure is a rebuttable presumption that shifts the burden to the manufacturer, cited to the statute.
The used-car coverage map
Tap a state. Green states have a real used-car lemon law; amber cover used cars only while under the original warranty; teal are new-vehicle only.
Two things every lemon law gets misread on
1. The numbers are a presumption, not a hard gate. Every state here — California is only the most famous — writes its repair-attempt and out-of-service thresholds as a rebuttable presumption. Hitting the number shifts the burden onto the manufacturer to prove your vehicle is not a lemon; it is not an automatic win, and you may still qualify with fewer attempts if a reasonable number of repairs is shown another way.
2. "Used cars" splits three ways. Only 3 states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts) have a genuine used-car lemon law with a mileage-tiered dealer warranty. In 4 states a used car is covered only while it is still under the original manufacturer warranty. The remaining 8 cover new vehicles only. A plain "used: yes/no" would be wrong for the middle group.
Pick your state
Repair-attempt trigger, out-of-service count, and used-car category on each card.
How to read a lemon law
A lemon law asks whether the manufacturer had a reasonable number of attempts to fix a substantial defect under warranty. The states put a number on "reasonable" — often four attempts, or three for the same defect, or one for a serious safety defect, or a stretch of days out of service — but that number only creates a presumption. Watch three details that trip people up: some states count out-of-service time in business days (Illinois, North Carolina, Massachusetts) rather than calendar days; only six states give a reduced count for safety defects; and used-car coverage is genuinely three different things. Every entry links to its statute or managing agency, and pages still pending verification say so plainly. This is legal information, not legal advice.