License and citation
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Copy, adapt, and build on it for any purpose, including commercially. Credit Drone Authority and link back to this page.
Copy-paste citation
Drone Authority. "U.S. State Drone Law Dataset." October 23, 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
Entries are deliberately conservative. They state the federal floor, which is uniform nationwide, and the documented state posture, and say where specifics vary by locality. Statute citations appear only when verified against the code published by the state itself, and each indexable state guide maps every claim to a primary source.
Educational reference, not legal advice. Rules change, and local ordinances may apply. Verify against the linked primary sources before relying on any record.
Found an error? corrections@droneauthority.org. Corrections are published, not quietly patched.
Human-readable version: drone laws by state. All datasets: Drone Authority open data.