Maryland Drone Laws: Privacy, Trespass & Warrant Rules Explained

Maryland has no drone-specific privacy statute for private citizens. Disputes fall back on general trespass, nuisance, and invasion-of-privacy law, layered under a 2015 state law that preempts local drone ordinances and a 2024 law protecting correctional facilities from drones.

Federal Airspace Rules vs. Maryland State Law

The Federal Aviation Administration regulates the national airspace: registration, Remote Pilot Certification under Part 107, the recreational exception at 49 U.S.C. 44809, and Remote ID broadcast, all nationwide and outside any state's control. Maryland has not layered a dedicated drone-privacy statute on top of that federal framework the way states like California or Texas have. What Maryland has instead is a 2015 preemption law keeping drone regulation at the state level, a narrow 2024 correctional-facility statute, a decades-old wildlife statute, and Maryland's ordinary common-law privacy torts, which predate drones entirely but still apply to them.

Maryland Has No Civilian Drone-Privacy Statute: What Governs Instead

Maryland is one of the roughly three dozen states without a dedicated drone-privacy or targeted-surveillance statute, so a resident who believes a neighbor's drone is spying on them relies on general common-law claims rather than a statute written with drones in mind. Maryland recognizes the tort of intrusion upon seclusion, defined as the intentional intrusion, physically or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person and causes injury. The leading Maryland decision applying that tort to covert filming, Furman v. Sheppard, 130 Md. App. 67, 744 A.2d 583 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 2000), involved an insurance investigator who trespassed into a gated, private yacht club to videotape a personal-injury plaintiff working on his boat. The court rejected the intrusion claim, reasoning that the investigator filmed only activity that was already visible to other club members and to boaters on the adjacent public waterway, and that trespass alone does not automatically convert otherwise reasonable surveillance into an unreasonable one.

The same reasoning would likely extend to a drone: Maryland courts have not directly addressed drone-based surveillance, but Furman suggests a court would focus on what the drone actually captured and whether that was already visible from a lawful vantage point, rather than on the fact that a drone flew over the property line. A drone that peers through a fenced yard's tree line to record activity no ground-level observer could see stands on different footing than one that photographs a yard already visible from the street.

Separately, Md. Code Ann., Transp. Section 5-1001 establishes "a public right to freedom of transit in air commerce through the airspace of this State," meaning a Maryland property owner generally cannot exclude aircraft, including a drone, from the airspace above their land. That right is not unlimited: the statute restricts operation at a "dangerously low altitude" that interferes with an existing lawful use of land or water, or that poses an imminent danger to people or property, which is the closest thing Maryland law has to an aerial trespass or nuisance standard.

Much of the Maryland Suburbs Sit Inside Washington's No-Drone Zone

This is a federal restriction, not a Maryland statute, but it is the single most important drone rule for a large share of Maryland residents. The FAA maintains a Washington, D.C. Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA), a 30-nautical-mile ring centered on Reagan National Airport, and within it a smaller Flight Restricted Zone (FRZ) reaching out roughly 13 to 15 nautical miles. Drone flight inside the FRZ is prohibited outright without specific FAA and security-agency authorization; the inner-Beltway Maryland suburbs, including National Harbor, Oxon Hill, Hyattsville, College Park, and the inner edges of Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and Silver Spring, sit inside or against that ring. Between 15 and 30 nautical miles, covering most of Montgomery and Prince George's counties, recreational flight under 49 U.S.C. 44809 is generally allowed, but Part 107 commercial flight needs SFRA-specific authorization on top of ordinary LAANC clearance. A drone flight that is otherwise perfectly legal under Maryland's civilian privacy and trespass law can still be a serious federal violation if it launches from, or enters, this airspace without the right authorization, so a Maryland operator anywhere near the Beltway should check the FAA's B4UFLY app or DroneZone before taking off.

Does Maryland Law Require a Warrant for Police Drone Use?

No. Maryland has not enacted a statute requiring a warrant before a state or local law enforcement agency uses a drone, unlike neighboring Virginia. House Bill 471, sponsored in recent sessions to impose a warrant requirement and to make improperly gathered drone evidence inadmissible, traces back to concerns first raised after the Baltimore Police Department's 2019 aerial surveillance program. It has been reintroduced in the 2025 and 2026 sessions and remained in committee as of this writing, meaning it is not current law. Until it passes, Maryland police drone use is governed by ordinary Fourth Amendment principles and individual agency policy rather than a state-specific statutory floor. For the roughly dozen states that already impose a statutory warrant requirement on police drone use, see Drone Laws by State.

Maryland Preempts Local Drone Ordinances

Md. Code Ann., Econ. Dev. Section 14-301, enacted in 2015 as Chapter 164 (Senate Bill 370), provides that only the State of Maryland may enact a law or take other action to prohibit, restrict, or regulate the testing or operation of unmanned aircraft systems, and it expressly supersedes any existing county or municipal ordinance that attempts to do so, while preserving federal preemption of state law. In practice, enforcement has lagged the statute's text. A 2020 Baltimore Sun report described Carroll County requiring a permit and $1 million in liability insurance to fly a drone in several county parks, a rule that appears to conflict with Section 14-301 on its face; rather than challenge it, at least one commercial drone operator simply relocated his practice flights to a neighboring county instead of testing the preemption question in court.

Correctional Facilities: Drones and Contraband

Effective October 1, 2024, Md. Code Ann., Crim. Law Section 9-417.1, enacted as Senate Bill 273, makes it a crime to use an unmanned aircraft to deliver contraband to a person confined in a place of confinement, and separately bars intentionally operating a drone over a correctional facility to record images of it without authorization from the managing official or the Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services. A violation is punishable by up to three years' imprisonment, a fine of up to $1,000, or both, and covered facilities must post visible signage warning the public about the restriction. The law responds to a documented, ongoing pattern of drones smuggling cell phones, drugs, and weapons into Maryland correctional facilities, a problem the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services had previously been able to address only through internal policy rather than criminal statute.

Hunting, Wildlife, and Drones

Md. Code Ann., Nat. Res. Section 10-410(j) bars hunting or attempting to hunt wild birds or mammals "from an aircraft" within Maryland, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, imprisonment of up to six months, or both. The statute predates consumer drones, but Maryland wildlife officials treat it as reaching drones used to hunt or to spot game for a hunt, consistent with the federal Airborne Hunting Act's similarly broad definition of aircraft. A separate hunter-interference statute, Nat. Res. Section 10-422, bars intentionally interfering with a lawful hunt or harassing game animals on private land or Department-managed hunting areas, a provision that could also reach a drone flown specifically to disrupt a hunt. A hunter who wants to use a drone for post-kill game recovery should confirm current Department of Natural Resources policy before flying, since Maryland has not adopted a specific carve-out for that narrower use.

Can I Shoot Down a Drone Over My Property in Maryland?

No. Federal law, not Maryland law, controls this question. The Aircraft Sabotage Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 32, makes it a felony to willfully damage, destroy, or disable an "aircraft," a category the FAA has treated as including drones since 2012, regardless of altitude or property ownership below. A conviction carries up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Publicized cases where a shooter avoided serious consequences under state law, like Kentucky's 2015 "Kentucky Drone Slayer" incident, reflect local prosecutorial discretion rather than an established legal right; the related federal suit, Boggs v. Meredith, was dismissed in 2017 on jurisdictional grounds without the court reaching the merits. No Maryland statute authorizes a property owner to shoot down or otherwise disable a drone. For the camera side of Maryland privacy law, including home security and workplace monitoring, see Maryland Surveillance Camera Laws.

Penalties at a Glance