Kansas Drone Laws: Stalking Act & Privacy Rules Explained

Kansas has no dedicated drone-privacy statute. Instead, flying a drone to spy on someone at their home is harassment under the state's stalking law, K.S.A. 60-31a02, and a 2025 law separately bars government drones built with parts from countries such as China or Russia.

This guide is part of our Drone Laws by State series; for the broader rules on recording people in Kansas, see our surveillance camera laws guide.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses Kansas law governing private and law-enforcement drone use under K.S.A. 60-31a02, K.S.A. 21-5427, K.S.A. 47-1827, K.S.A. 32-1003, and the Kansas Land and Military Installation Protection Act. It does not address FAA registration, Remote ID, or Part 107 pilot certification, which apply the same way nationwide regardless of state law.

How federal and Kansas law divide drone authority

The FAA controls where a drone may fly nationwide. Under 49 U.S.C. section 40102, it classifies any unmanned aircraft as an "aircraft," regardless of size. A commercial flight generally needs a Remote Pilot Certificate under 14 C.F.R. Part 107; a hobbyist flight falls under the separate exception at 49 U.S.C. section 44809. Most registrable drones must also broadcast Remote ID since 2023.

That federal structure does not answer whether a Kansas neighbor can legally record you with a drone, or whether Kansas police need a warrant to fly one over your yard. Kansas answers those questions with light statutory coverage compared to many states, but not with a single statute. Only one Kansas provision names unmanned aerial systems outright, K.S.A. 60-31a02, and it is a civil definition rather than a criminal prohibition. Three further statutes reach drone flight without ever using the word: K.S.A. 47-1827, which criminalizes low-altitude overflight of an animal facility or a research field crop area; K.S.A. 32-1003, on taking and locating game; and the 2025 procurement law aimed at foreign-made hardware rather than privacy.

Can a private citizen legally fly a drone over my property in Kansas?

Kansas does not have a standalone drone-privacy statute the way Kentucky, Florida, or Texas do. Instead, the legislature folded drone surveillance into the state's existing Protection from Stalking Act. K.S.A. 60-31a02 defines harassment as a knowing and intentional course of conduct directed at a specific person that seriously alarms, annoys, torments, or terrorizes that person and serves no legitimate purpose, and it expressly provides that harassment "shall include any course of conduct carried out through the use of an unmanned aerial system over or near any dwelling, occupied vehicle or other place where one may reasonably expect to be safe from uninvited intrusion or surveillance."

Two features matter for how this actually works. First, it requires a course of conduct, meaning two or more separate acts over time, so an isolated single overflight is unlikely by itself to meet the statutory bar. Second, K.S.A. 60-31a02 is purely definitional and sits inside a civil act, so the remedy it supports is civil: a target can petition a Kansas court for a protection-from-stalking order against the drone operator.

Criminal stalking is a different statute, K.S.A. 21-5427, and it is textually independent of that civil definition. It builds its own course of conduct at 21-5427(f)(1) out of a list of qualifying acts, threatening a person's safety, following, appearing in close proximity, damaging property, using an electronic tracking system, and communicating with the target among them, and it does not mention drones or unmanned aerial systems anywhere. A sustained pattern of overflights could in principle satisfy that general definition, but the criminal code nowhere says so the way 60-31a02 does for the civil claim.

Where criminal stalking is charged, a first conviction is generally a class A person misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. A second conviction has no single ceiling. It is a severity level 7 person felony for reckless stalking under 21-5427(a)(1), a severity level 5 person felony for knowing stalking under (a)(2), and a severity level 4 person felony where the course of conduct targeted a child. Kansas numbers its severity levels downward, so level 4 is the most serious of the three, and the knowing branch is the one a deliberate campaign of drone harassment would most naturally fit.

Outside the stalking-law context, a Kansas property owner bothered by a drone is generally left to general common-law trespass, nuisance, or invasion-of-privacy principles rather than a drone-specific statute, since Kansas has not enacted a broader civilian image-capture law like the ones now in place in Kentucky, Florida, or North Carolina.

One Kansas criminal statute does reach low-altitude drone flight over private ground directly, even though it never uses the word drone. K.S.A. 47-1827 makes it a class A nonperson misdemeanor to fly an aircraft in the airspace directly above an animal facility, or directly above the field crop production area of a research or product development program, below the minimum safe altitude prescribed in 14 C.F.R. 91.119(c), without the owner's consent. Federal law already classifies an unmanned aircraft as an aircraft, so a drone flown low over a covered Kansas animal facility or research crop area without permission falls inside it. That language was added by 2024 Session Laws chapter 109, section 3, effective July 1, 2024. It protects agricultural and research operations rather than homes, so it does nothing for a homeowner watching a neighbor's drone circle the back yard.

Does police need a warrant to fly a drone over my property in Kansas?

Kansas has not enacted a statute that directly requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant before flying a drone, unlike the roughly dozen states that have. That silence does not mean police drone use is unregulated; it means the analysis defaults to ordinary Fourth Amendment and Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights section 15 search-and-seizure case law rather than a specific statutory floor written for drones.

In practice, that means whether a given warrantless drone flight by Kansas law enforcement was lawful turns on the same doctrines that would apply to any other warrantless search: whether the area observed was within the constitutionally protected curtilage of a home, whether the flight altitude and vantage point exceeded what a reasonable person would expect the public to observe, and whether a recognized exception, such as consent or exigent circumstances, applied. Kansas residents concerned about a specific law-enforcement drone flight should not assume a state statutory warrant requirement exists the way it does in several other states; none currently does in Kansas.

Kansas's 2025 foreign-adversary drone procurement law and hunting rules

Kansas's most significant recent drone legislation has nothing to do with civilian privacy. House Substitute for Senate Bill 9, the Kansas Land and Military Installation Protection Act, was signed by the governor on April 7, 2025, and took effect July 1, 2025. Its drone provisions bar any Kansas governmental agency, state or local, from purchasing a drone, or related services, equipment, or software, whose critical components were produced in a country of concern, defined as China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, or Venezuela, or by a foreign principal. Critical component reaches beyond the airframe to any software installed on the drone or on a supporting device or network. The same act separately restricts foreign-principal ownership of real property within 100 miles of a military installation in Kansas or an adjoining state, and requires existing foreign-owned holders to register with the Attorney General.

Separately, K.S.A. 32-1003 restricts the use of vehicles in hunting, though its text is narrower than it is usually described. Subsection (a)(1) makes it unlawful to take any game animal or furbearing animal from a motorboat, airplane, motor vehicle or other water, air or land vehicle, absent a valid handicapped hunting and fishing permit. Subsection (a)(2) separately bars providing or receiving information on the location of such an animal by radio or other mechanical device for purposes of taking it. The statute never uses the word wildlife, never mentions drones, and contains no prohibition on driving game, so the exposure for scouting deer with a drone comes from the mechanical-device clause in (a)(2) rather than the air-vehicle clause. It exists independent of any privacy law and sits alongside the federal Airborne Hunting Act, 16 U.S.C. section 742j-1.

Can I shoot down a drone over my Kansas property?

No. Federal law makes it a serious crime to damage or destroy any drone regardless of whose airspace it is in. 18 U.S.C. section 32, the Aircraft Sabotage Act, criminalizes willfully damaging an "aircraft," a category the FAA has applied to drones since 2012, and carries up to 20 years in federal prison. The FAA's position, stated since 2016, is that it controls the airspace above private land, not the landowner, so property ownership on the ground does not create a right to fire on what flies overhead.

Kansas law enforcement has echoed that warning directly. After a wave of drone sightings across Butler and Sedgwick counties left residents worried about privacy and break-ins, a forensic investigator with the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office publicly cautioned that shooting down a drone is a very bad idea that will most likely lead to felony charges: criminal damage to property under Kansas law, and, within city limits, unlawful discharge of a firearm. Kansas has no statute authorizing a landowner to disable or shoot down a drone, and a favorable outcome in another state's case is not a legal shield in Kansas.

Watch out: Because K.S.A. 60-31a02 requires a course of conduct, meaning two or more separate incidents, a single one-off drone overflight by a neighbor is unlikely to qualify for a stalking protection order by itself, even if it felt invasive.

More Kansas Laws

• Kansas Data Privacy Laws
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• Kansas Police Bodycam Laws
• Kansas Recording Laws
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