The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) claims control on airspace and demands a single national policy rather than a series of state drone laws. However, various states have different state drone laws apart from the mounting drone bills proposed separately in order to control the use of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
FAA's drone policy focuses on air safety, including maintaining drones lower than 400 feet. However, the different state drone laws seemed to clash with the federal national drone policy because different rules apply for each state. As reported by USA Today, North Dakota bans attaching lethal weapons on drones. Michigan prohibits drones for hunting while Arkansas won't allow drones to capture photos of oil refineries and power plants.
"It depends who you ask and it's not very clear at all," Troy Rule, an associate professor of law at Arizona State University told USA Today. "It would need to be litigated."
According to Security Sales, the congress asked FAA to formulate measures on how UAV could share the sky with commercial planes. The first FAA drone policy regulating drones weighing up to 55 pounds will be out in June. Last year, FAA has released statement on their authority on regulating drones' use, efficiency of the national airspace and its management. On March 9, a U.S senate bill was initialized that had given FAA drone policy more authority than the state drone laws in terms of drones' design, testing, licensing, manufacture, certification, operation, registration, or maintenance of drones.
The collision of the federal law and the state drone laws is also a matter of debate for national groups. "State proposals have the potential to create a complicated patchwork of laws that may erode, rather than enhance, safety," Brian Wynne, CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems Int'l told a Senate panel.
Meanwhile, a new state law in Utah is giving authority to law enforcers to shoot drones. Known as Senate Bill 210, the bill would permit cops to shoot particular drones and would control the use of UAV's near wildfires and prisons, Popular Mechanics reports.
In the wake of cities, state drone laws and FAA drone policy clashing, critics suspect that drone regulation would be a disorderly one. As of 2015, the National Council of State Legislatures claimed that 45 states argued about 168 drone bills. There are 28 states that passed at least 26 drone bills.
