Florida Legislature passes law restricting where you can fly your drone

Thursday, the Florida State Senate took up SB 1422, a bill to restrict drone flights over critical infrastructure and allow individuals the ability to bring down drones using “reasonable force” if they are flying over their property. However, the body substituted the less controversial House bill, passing it unanimously and sending it to the Governor.

Wednesday we shared that this bill would dangerously allow Florida residents the ability to take down drones they believed to be breaking their expectation of privacy. Without a set definition, it could have led to a rise in drone shootings given residents’ misunderstanding of federal law versus state law.

However, before taking up the vote, the Florida State Senate took up the bill’s House of Representatives sister, HB 1121. This bill, which has already passed the House, removes the section detailing the right to take drones down.

The bill’s purpose is to protect critical infrastructure from drone surveillance or potential damage by drones flying into something important. The law listed out a set of what the state views as “critical infrastructure” and also specified who can and can’t fly above them. This is still legally confusing, as only the FAA has jurisdiction to regulate US airspace.

That didn’t stop Florida’s upper house from passing the motion 37-0. So while legally there could be arguments, in Florida you can no longer fly over:

• A power generation or transmission facility substation, switching station, or electrical control center.
• A chemical or rubber manufacturing or storage facility.
• A water intake structure, water treatment facility, wastewater treatment plant, or pump station.
• A mining facility.
• A natural gas or compressed gas compressor station, storage facility, or natural gas or compressed gas pipeline.
• A liquid natural gas or propane gas terminal or storage facility.
• Any portion of an aboveground oil or gas pipeline.
• A refinery.
• A gas processing plant, including a plant used in the processing, treatment, or fractionation of natural gas.
• A wireless or wired communications facility, including the tower, antennas antennae, support structures, and all associated ground-based equipment.
• A seaport as listed in s. 311.09(1), which need not be completely enclosed by a fence or other physical barrier and need not be marked with a sign or signs indicating that entry is forbidden.
• An inland port or other facility or group of facilities serving as a point of intermodal transfer of freight in a specific area physically separated from a seaport.
• An airport as defined in s. 330.27.
• A spaceport territory as defined in s. 331.303(19).
• A military installation as defined in 10 U.S.C. s. 2801(c)(4) and an armory as defined in s. 250.01.
• A dam as defined in s. 373.403(1) or other structures, such as locks, floodgates, or dikes, which are designed to maintain or control the level of navigable waterways.
• A state correctional institution as defined in s. 944.02 or a contractor-operated correctional facility authorized under chapter 957.
• A secure detention center or facility as defined in s. 985.03, or a moderate-risk residential facility, a high-risk residential facility, or a maximum-risk residential facility as those terms are described in s. 985.03(44).
• A county detention facility as defined in s. 951.23.
• A critical infrastructure facility as defined in s. 692.201.

The bill still requires a signature from Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, but I don’t think that will be a problem.

Whether or not this bill could stand up to a lawsuit for being constitutional is unknown. A bill in the US Senate could pass the first 200 feet of airspace to local governments, but that hasn’t made it to its first subcommittee meeting yet. For now, the US Constitution is clear on who regulates airspace, but states seem to want some sort of say.