Open data

U.S. state drone law dataset

Name: U.S. State Drone Law Dataset
Creator: Drone Authority
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Drone law for all 50 states plus the District of Columbia — 51 records covering preemption posture, a plain-language summary, key restrictions, and the primary source behind each entry. Free, openly licensed, no signup.

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Records: 51
Formats: CSV · JSON
Last updated: July 26, 2026

License: CC BY 4.0

This dataset is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may copy, redistribute, adapt, and build on it for any purpose, including commercially. The one condition is attribution: credit Drone Authority and link back to this page.

Copy-paste citation

Drone Authority. "U.S. State Drone Law Dataset." July 26, 2026. Licensed CC BY 4.0. https://droneauthority.org/data/state-drone-laws

Fields

state: Full state name (plus District of Columbia).
slug: URL-safe identifier, stable across releases.
preemption: One of: preemption, no-preemption, mixed, unknown.
preemption_meaning: Plain-language expansion of the preemption code.
summary: Two to three sentence plain-language posture.
key_points: Privacy, state-land, and notable restrictions. Pipe-delimited in CSV.
official_source_url: Lead primary source — state code or agency page where verified.
additional_source_urls: Supporting primary sources. Pipe-delimited in CSV.
last_reviewed: Claim-level review date, or empty where not yet claim-audited.
page_url: The corresponding human-readable page on Drone Authority.
source_license: Constant. Present so the license survives a copy-paste of the rows.

How it was built, and what it is not

Entries are deliberately conservative. We state the federal floor (which is uniform nationwide), the well-documented state posture, and we say “varies by locality” wherever specifics are uncertain or change frequently. We do not invent statute numbers, penalties, or specifics. Statute citations appear only when verified against the current code published by the state itself. Where a claim rests only on a secondary overview, the corresponding state page is marked accordingly.

Educational reference, not legal advice. Drone regulations change frequently, and local city or county ordinances may apply in addition to state and federal rules. Verify against the linked primary sources and the FAA before every flight.

Found an error or a superseded statute? corrections@droneauthority.org — corrections are published, not quietly patched.

Browse the human-readable version at drone laws by state.