Minnesota Drone Laws (2026): Police Warrants, Privacy, and Reporting

Minnesota law enforcement faces one of the country's strictest drone-warrant statutes, with bans on facial recognition and protest surveillance without a warrant, plus mandatory public reporting. Civilian drone disputes fall under general trespass, nuisance, and Minnesota's interference-with-privacy statute rather than a dedicated civilian drone law.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses drone law in Minnesota under the state's law-enforcement UAV warrant statute (Minn. Stat. § 626.19), general trespass and interference-with-privacy law, hunting-related restrictions, and the federal FAA and shoot-down framework that applies nationwide. It does not cover FAA flight-operation rules in depth or drone law in other states; see the drone laws by state hub for other jurisdictions.

How the FAA and Minnesota Law Divide Authority Over Drones

Federal law treats every drone as an aircraft, putting flight altitude, pilot certification, airspace authorization, and Remote ID broadcast under the Federal Aviation Administration's exclusive authority nationwide (14 CFR Part 107 for commercial and government flights, 49 U.S.C. § 44809 for recreational flights). Minnesota cannot and does not regulate where in the sky a drone may fly. What Minnesota regulates instead, more comprehensively than most states, is when and how law enforcement may use a drone at all, plus general conduct rules like trespass, privacy, and hunting interference that apply to any resident's drone. The FAA's 2023 fact sheet on state and local UAS regulation confirms this division nationally; see the drone laws by state hub for how other states draw the same line.

Does Police Need a Warrant to Fly a Drone in Minnesota?

Minnesota imposes one of the country's more protective law enforcement drone statutes. Under Minn. Stat. § 626.19, subd. 2, a law enforcement agency must not use a UAV without a search warrant, except under 11 enumerated circumstances listed in subdivision 3: emergencies involving a risk of death or bodily harm, evidence at imminent risk of destruction, public events with a heightened safety risk, credible terrorism intelligence, natural or man-made disaster response, threat assessments before a specific event, reasonable suspicion of criminal activity in a public area, crash reconstruction on public roads, officer training or public relations with consent, a government entity's written request for a non-law-enforcement purpose, and active searches for a missing person.

The statute goes further than most states' warrant rules in two respects. Subdivision 4(b) bars a Minnesota law enforcement agency from equipping a drone with facial-recognition or other biometric-matching technology unless a warrant expressly authorizes it. Subdivision 4(d) separately bars using a drone to collect data on a public protest or demonstration unless a warrant or listed exception applies. Both provisions target uses of drone surveillance that concerned civil-liberties advocates well beyond the basic search-and-seizure question, and few other states have codified either restriction.

Minnesota's Drone Transparency Requirement: What the Annual Reports Show

Minnesota is also unusual in requiring every agency that maintains or uses a drone to publicly account for its warrantless use every year. Under Minn. Stat. § 626.19, subd. 12, each agency must report to the Department of Public Safety by January 15 the number of warrantless UAV deployments from the prior year, the date and authorized reason for each one, and the total cost of its drone program; the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension then compiles a statewide report for the legislature, published by June 15.

The 2025 compilation, released June 15, 2026, gives a concrete picture of how often this happens. Minnesota law enforcement agencies reported 9,080 warrantless UAV deployments statewide in 2025, up 38 percent from 6,603 in 2024, while total statewide spending on drone programs was $1,312,332.76, down 33 percent from $1,973,337.63 the year before. Rochester Police Department was the state's single largest user, with 1,009 warrantless deployments, followed by the Minnesota State Patrol (633) and Minnetonka Police Department (611). Few other states publish this level of agency-by-agency deployment detail.

Can My Neighbor Legally Fly a Drone Over My Property in Minnesota?

Minnesota has not enacted a dedicated civilian drone-privacy statute the way California, Texas, or Florida have, so a resident's options against a neighbor's drone rest on general law. Trespass and private nuisance claims can address a drone that repeatedly flies low over a property or interferes with its use and enjoyment. Where a drone is used to surreptitiously watch or record someone, Minnesota's interference-with-privacy statute, Minn. Stat. § 609.746, may apply, though its core provisions were not written with aerial cameras in mind. Everything operative sits in the lettered paragraphs of subdivision 1; subdivisions 2 and 3 were repealed in 1993. Paragraphs (a) and (b) make it a gross misdemeanor, escalating to a felony for a minor victim or a repeat offense, to enter another's property and then surreptitiously gaze through, or install or use an observation or recording device through, the window or other aperture of a house or dwelling with intent to intrude on the privacy of a member of the household, elements built around a person physically on the property, not a drone hovering above it. Paragraphs (c) through (e) carry no entry element at all, but each is confined to narrower ground: (c) and (d) reach only a hotel sleeping room, a tanning booth, or a comparable place where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and is likely to expose intimate parts, and (e) reaches only recording aimed at capturing an individual's intimate parts without consent, not general backyard activity. Whether a remotely piloted drone satisfies the 'enters upon another's property' element in paragraphs (a) and (b), and whether ordinary backyard drone filming falls within the statute at all, has not been tested in Minnesota courts.

Hunting, Fishing, and Wildlife Drone Restrictions

Two distinct rules reach drones around game. Minn. Stat. § 97B.091 provides that a person may not use a motor vehicle to intentionally drive, chase, run over, kill, or take a wild animal, and Minn. Stat. § 97A.015, subd. 32, defines 'motor vehicle' for the game and fish laws as a self-propelled vehicle operated on a highway, on a railroad track, on the ground, in the water, or in the air. That air clause is what brings a drone inside the ban, so the motor-vehicle reading is statutory rather than merely a departmental gloss. Separately, the Department of Natural Resources' published guidance on drone use while hunting states that it is not legal in Minnesota to use drones to take big or small game, and that this includes using a drone to recover dead or wounded game; the DNR rests that position on Minn. Stat. § 97B.085, subd. 1, which bars using radio equipment to take big or small game, with taking defined to include assisting in the take. Note what neither text says: scouting, locating, and tracking game are not named in any of these provisions, so a drone flight that only looks for animals, separate from an attempt to take one, sits in untested ground rather than under a clear statutory prohibition. Over wildlife management areas, Minn. R. 6230.0250, subp. 13, prohibits aircraft activities that chase, herd, scare, or otherwise disturb wildlife except in an emergency or with the wildlife manager's authorization. Minn. Stat. § 97A.037 also prohibits intentionally disturbing or interfering with a person who is lawfully taking or preparing to take a wild animal; the section itself expressly grades only one violation, failing to obey a peace officer's order to stop the harassing conduct, as a misdemeanor under subdivision 4, but chapter 97A's general penalty provision, Minn. Stat. § 97A.301, subd. 1, makes a violation of the game and fish laws a misdemeanor unless a different penalty is prescribed.

Can You Shoot Down a Drone Over Your Property in Minnesota?

As in every other state, disabling or shooting down a drone over Minnesota property is a federal felony regardless of how unwelcome the flight is. The FAA classifies drones as aircraft within the National Airspace System, so 18 U.S.C. § 32 applies: willfully damaging, destroying, or disabling a drone carries up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000, plus loss of Second Amendment rights under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) upon conviction. This holds even over a Minnesotan's own backyard, because the FAA, not the landowner, controls the airspace. No state, Minnesota included, has passed a law giving a property owner the right to shoot down a drone.

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