Let Local Players Set the Rules: State, local and tribal authority is vital to realizing the full potential of the drone economy.

• Author: Govan, Reggie

To realize the full potential of drones for an ever-expanding range of commercial activity, it is necessary to recognize the important role of state and local governments to regulate aspects of drone operations.

Recreational, sport and commercial drone operations represent a fundamental paradigm shift. For the first time in commercial aviation, all the land in every neighborhood may be used for takeoff and landing, and all the airspace immediately above land may be used to fly commercial drones regardless of the landowner's wishes. As a result, government now is required to adjudicate myriad interests unique to neighborhoods and communities across the country, and to decide whether, where and when to allow commercial drone operations in very low-altitude airspace.

Despite the drone industry's protests to the contrary, continued reliance on federal agencies to provide regulatory solutions to issues uniquely within the purview of state and local governments is flawed as a matter of law, regulation and enlightened self-interest.

Ever since the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Causby, federal law unambiguously gives private landowners "exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere." While the term "immediate reaches" has not been defined in statute or case law, Causby clearly establishes that "a landowner owns at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use," even if he or she "does not in any physical manner occupy that stratum of airspace or make use of it in the conventional sense."

Because Causby remains good law, we must turn to state and local governments, not to federal agencies, and certainly not to the FAA, to resolve how best to regulate the undefined airspace associated with each parcel of land.

Even during the golden age of manned aviation, state, local and tribal governments retained exclusive power to decide whether and where to site an airport for use by manned aircraft. Surely, that same authority extends to those governments to determine whether, where and when drones may take off, land and traverse the low-altitude airspace above their jurisdictions, provided the FAA has found such operation satisfies general aviation safety requirements.

A handful of states have enacted legislation that permits all drone flights that otherwise meet the FAA's general safety standards. That approach mistakenly conflates the FAA's role to determine drone safety requirements...