Tennessee Drone Laws (2026): Warrants, Privacy & Shoot-Downs

Tennessee makes it a crime to fly a drone over someone's property in order to spy on them, and it has one of the more detailed police-warrant statutes in the country. Tennessee Code Annotated Sections 39-13-901 through 39-13-907, the state's Surveillance by Unmanned Aircraft law, make it an offense to use a drone to capture an image of an individual or privately owned real property with the intent to conduct surveillance, and a felony to surveil a power substation or other critical infrastructure from close range. A separate statute, Section 39-13-609, the Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act, requires a search warrant before a Tennessee law enforcement agency can use a drone to gather evidence. What Tennessee does not give a property owner is a statutory right to sue: the drone statute carries criminal penalties only.

This guide is part of our Drone Laws by State series, which also covers how state drone law intersects with surveillance camera laws more broadly.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses Tennessee state law on law enforcement drone use under Tenn. Code Ann. Section 39-13-609, the state's civilian drone statute at Tenn. Code Ann. Title 39, Chapter 13, Part 9, Tennessee's general civil and criminal privacy law as applied to private drone operators, and the federal baseline that applies in every state. It does not address a civilian's right to record police in public, which is covered separately in our guide to recording laws.

Does the FAA or Tennessee control where a drone can fly?

The Federal Aviation Administration is the exclusive regulator of the airspace itself, in Tennessee as in every state. A commercial or otherwise non-recreational drone operator must hold a Remote Pilot Certificate under 14 CFR Part 107, register the aircraft, fly at or below 400 feet, and stay within visual line of sight; recreational flyers register separately under 49 U.S.C. Section 44809. Since September 16, 2023, most registered drones must also broadcast a Remote ID signal identifying the aircraft and its control station. Tennessee cannot add its own altitude ceiling or flight-path rule on top of that federal framework; a federal district court struck down several provisions of a Massachusetts town's drone ordinance on exactly that theory in Singer v. City of Newton, 284 F. Supp. 3d 125 (D. Mass. 2017). What Tennessee regulates instead is conduct, meaning what a police department or a private operator does with a drone once it is over Tennessee ground.

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

Yes, in most cases. Tenn. Code Ann. Section 39-13-609(c) provides that a law enforcement agency's use of a drone to search for and collect evidence or other information is a search subject to Article I, Section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution, and that a Tennessee agency may not do so without either a search warrant signed by a judge or a judicially recognized exception to the warrant requirement. Subsection (d) then lists the specific circumstances that allow a warrantless flight: a credible terrorist-attack risk confirmed by the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, an imminent danger to life supported by reasonable suspicion, a search for a fugitive or escapee or a hostage situation, a search for a missing person, a motor vehicle accident investigation on a public right-of-way, a crime that occurred on publicly owned property, a fire investigation scene, aerial security coverage for an event open to the public such as a concert, athletic event, festival, or protest, aerial coverage during a declared state of emergency after a natural disaster, or investigation of the scene of a crime that is occurring or has occurred. Every flight, warrant or not, must also comply with applicable FAA rules.

The statute backs up the warrant requirement with real teeth. Any evidence a drone collects must be deleted within three business days of collection unless it is directly relevant to both the lawful reason the drone was used and an ongoing investigation or prosecution, in which case it is retained under the same policies the agency uses for evidence gathered by other means. Evidence collected in violation of the statute cannot be admitted in a Tennessee criminal prosecution, and it cannot be used to establish probable cause or reasonable suspicion for anything else if it was unrelated to the drone's original lawful purpose. A person aggrieved by a violation can sue the law enforcement agency directly under subsection (f) for all appropriate relief, including injunctive relief, destruction of the evidence, damages, and reasonable attorney fees.

Tennessee first enacted the Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act in 2013 (Acts 2013, ch. 470) and substantially rewrote the warrant-exception and data-retention provisions in 2018 (Acts 2018, ch. 970, effective July 1, 2018), which is the version currently in force.

Can a neighbor or business legally fly a drone over my property in Tennessee?

Not if the point of the flight is to watch you. Tennessee has a dedicated civilian drone statute, Tenn. Code Ann. Title 39, Chapter 13, Part 9, and Section 39-13-903(a)(1) is the operative offense: a person commits a Class C misdemeanor by using an unmanned aircraft to capture an image of an individual or privately owned real property in Tennessee with the intent to conduct surveillance on that individual or property. "Image" is defined broadly in Section 39-13-901 to cover not just video and photographs but thermal, infrared, and other electromagnetic capture. Section 39-13-904 adds a second layer: possessing an image captured in violation of Section 39-13-903 is a Class C misdemeanor and disclosing, displaying, or distributing it is a Class B misdemeanor, with each image counted as a separate offense. Section 39-13-905 then makes an unlawfully captured image inadmissible in any criminal, juvenile, civil, or administrative proceeding, and shields it from public-records disclosure, discovery, and subpoena except to prove a violation of the drone statute itself. Tennessee's official drone program guidance from the Department of Transportation points readers to the same part, noting that capturing images of individuals in private settings without consent is prohibited.

Two limits matter before you assume a flight over your yard is a crime. First, the offense turns on surveillance intent, so a hobbyist transiting overhead on the way somewhere else is not committing it. Second, Section 39-13-902(a) carves out a long list of lawful captures that the offense is expressly subject to, including flights made with the consent of the owner or lawful occupant of the property, images of public real property, mapping and land surveying, electric and gas utility inspection, real estate marketing photography in which no individual is identifiable, and, most broadly, any flight made as part of a commercial service authorized by the FAA to operate unmanned aircraft. That last exception is why a business flying a properly authorized Part 107 commercial job is usually outside the statute even though a neighbor doing the same thing to spy would not be.

What Part 9 does not create is a civil cause of action. Unlike the Texas image-capture statute it is modeled on, Tennessee's version gives an aggrieved property owner no statutory right to sue for damages, so a civilian dispute over a drone still runs on common law. On the civil side, the Tennessee Supreme Court recognized the tort of intrusion upon seclusion in Givens v. Mullikin ex rel. Estate of McElwaney, 75 S.W.3d 383 (Tenn. 2002), holding that a person who intentionally intrudes on another's private affairs in a manner that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person can be liable for invasion of privacy; ordinary trespass and nuisance claims may also apply depending on the facts.

Separately, Tenn. Code Ann. Section 39-13-605 makes it an offense to knowingly photograph someone's unclothed intimate area without consent, where the image would offend or embarrass an ordinary person and was taken for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification. Effective July 1, 2025, a violation is a Class E felony at the baseline under Public Chapter 474 of 2025, rising to a Class D felony if the image is disseminated, the victim is under 13, or a minor under 13 was used to facilitate the offense, and rising further to a Class C felony if the image is disseminated and either the victim is under 13 or the defendant held and exploited a position of trust over the victim. A separate provision in the same statute makes it an offense to photograph and disseminate that kind of image with the intent to offend, intimidate, embarrass, ridicule, or harass the person shown; a first violation of that provision is a Class B misdemeanor, rising to a Class A misdemeanor for a repeat offense, with no felony escalation. That statute is narrowly aimed at nudity and intimate-area images, so a drone hovering over a fully clothed backyard barbecue falls to Section 39-13-903(a)(1) instead, which turns on the operator's surveillance intent rather than on what the camera happened to capture.

Places a Tennessee hobbyist simply cannot fly

Beyond the surveillance offense, Section 39-13-903 sets out three flat prohibitions that do not require any intent to spy and that catch ordinary recreational flyers most often. Under subdivision (a)(3), it is an offense to intentionally capture an image of an individual or event at, or to drop any item or substance into, an open-air event venue where more than 100 people are gathered for a ticketed event, without the consent of the venue owner or operator. Under (a)(4), knowingly flying within or over a designated fireworks discharge site, display site, or fallout area during an event is an offense, again absent the event owner's or operator's consent. Under (a)(5), knowingly flying a drone over the grounds of a correctional facility is an offense on its own terms, with no surveillance element at all. All three were added by 2015 Public Chapter 240, effective July 1, 2015, and each is a Class C misdemeanor under Section 39-13-903(b)(1). A 2026 bill, HB1538 in the 114th General Assembly, would have raised the correctional-facility offense to a Class C felony and allowed facility staff to disable an offending drone, but it was taken off notice in the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Subcommittee on April 15, 2026, so the misdemeanor penalty stands.

Section 39-13-903(c) provides a defense to prosecution under the section if the operator destroyed the image as soon as they knew it had been captured unlawfully and did so without disclosing, displaying, or distributing it to anyone else.

Weaponized drones and the federal shoot-down rule

Tennessee has not enacted its own statute banning a weapon-carrying drone the way some states have. It does, however, have a directly on-point critical-infrastructure felony. Section 39-13-903(a)(6) makes it an offense to knowingly operate a drone within 250 feet of the perimeter of a critical infrastructure facility, without the business operator's written consent, for the purpose of conducting surveillance of, gathering evidence or collecting information about, or photographically or electronically recording critical infrastructure data. The definition expressly includes an electrical power generation system, an electrical transmission system or any individual component of it, and an electrical distribution substation, along with refineries, chemical and hazardous-substance manufacturing facilities, water and wastewater treatment plants, natural gas and propane infrastructure, non-public railroad yards, and communication service facilities. That offense is a Class E felony under Section 39-13-903(b)(2), raised from a misdemeanor by 2019 Public Chapter 60, effective July 1, 2019. The subdivision does not reach an unmanned aircraft system operating for commercial purposes under an FAA authorization.

Because subdivision (a)(6) targets surveillance and data collection rather than an attack, the most violent drone plots are still charged federally. In September 2025, a 24-year-old Columbia, Tennessee man, Skyler Philippi, pleaded guilty to a federal charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction after federal investigators said he plotted to fly an explosive-laden drone into a Nashville electric substation as part of an extremist agenda; he faces up to life in prison at sentencing. That prosecution proceeded under federal terrorism and energy-facility statutes rather than Section 39-13-903, whose felony reaches the reconnaissance stage of such a plot rather than the bombing itself.

A related and more common misconception involves shooting down a drone that is merely a nuisance. The FAA classifies drones as aircraft within the National Airspace System, so 18 U.S.C. Section 32, the federal Aircraft Sabotage Act, applies to them: willfully damaging, destroying, or disabling a drone is a federal felony carrying up to 20 years in prison, regardless of whose property the drone is over, because the federal government, not the landowner, controls the airspace. No Tennessee statute authorizes a landowner to disable a drone over their own land, and a state criminal-mischief charge being reduced or dismissed in a sympathetic local case does not establish a legal right to do so.

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