Citations to State Drone Laws

In light of my earlier post where I pointed out the number of states that have warrant requirements for government drones, I thought it would be helpful to post a list of citations to state laws regulating drone use.

Thirteen states have passed some sort of law regulating drones, and eleven of them contain provisions requiring law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before using a drone.

This post is not an exhaustive collection of citations to every drone law in each state. For now, I will only list citations to statutory provisions that require the government to obtain a warrant before using a drone. I will also include the proper Bluebook citations for North Carolina and Virginia's laws, which are a bit more difficult to hunt down and properly cite.

Here are my citations for state statutes that require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before using drones:

Fl. Stat. § 934.50(3)-(4) (2013); Idaho Code Ann. §21-213(2) (2013); 725 Ill. Comp. Stat. 167/10, 167/15(1)-(3) (2014); Ind. Code § 35-33-5-9(a) (2014); Iowa Code Ann. § 808.15 (2014); Mont. Code Ann. § 46-5-109(1) (2013); Or. Rev. Stat. § 837.320(1)(a)-(b) (2013); Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-609(d)(2) (2013); Texas Gov. Code Ann. § 423.002(a)(7) (2013); Utah Code Ann. § 63G-18-103(1)(a) (2014); Wis. Stat. § 175.55(2) (2014).

Those states are Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.

One caveat: the dates in parentheses after each laws are the dates on which those laws were passed or most recently amended. It is possible (but somewhat unlikely) that states which passed drone laws in 2013 have released a version of their code in 2014, in which case, the correct year to include would be the year of the most recent code release. But since I do not currently have access to a library with up-to-date state codes, I cannot guarantee that all of those "(2013)" parentheticals are technically correct for Bluebooking purposes.

Finally, North Carolina and Virginia have passed moratoriums on drone use, but these laws can only be located in their Session Law form. This form is difficult to cite, since it requires locating the page of the session laws on which the law is listed.

Here are the citations to North Carolina and Virginia's moratoriums on drone laws: North Carolina: 2013 N.C. Sess. Laws. 1040. Virginia: 2013 Va. Acts 1408.

As states continue to pass drone laws, I will return to this post and update it. I will include a note of each update in addition to changing the text of the post. If, over time, it becomes too difficult to keep up with the updates, I will include a note that I have stopped editing this post.