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

Tennessee has no civil statute letting a landowner sue a neighbor for flying a drone overhead, but it has one of the more detailed police-warrant statutes in the country. Tennessee Code Annotated 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.

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, 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?

Tennessee has not passed a drone-specific civilian privacy statute comparable to California's anti-paparazzi law or Texas's image-capture statute. A Tennessean whose neighbor, a paparazzi photographer, or a business flies a drone over their yard has to rely on general common-law and criminal protections instead. 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.

On the criminal side, 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, not at a drone simply hovering over a fully clothed backyard barbecue, so most everyday drone nuisance complaints in Tennessee still come down to trespass and nuisance principles rather than a dedicated drone law.

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. What governs instead is federal law, and the stakes can be severe. 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. The case did not involve Tennessee's civilian drone statute at all. It shows that the most serious drone-enabled threats to critical infrastructure are prosecuted under federal terrorism and energy-facility statutes, not state drone law.

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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