In his ruling, District Judge Robert Pitman of the Western District of Texas in Austin declared elements of the contested law violated constitutional rights, particularly those covered by the First Amendment. Chief among those were strictures the law imposed on journalists using drones in Texas as information- and image-gathering tools in their reporting. The decision issues from a case lodged in 2019 by the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), which contested the legislation both prior to and after its passage into law.
Pitman faulted the Texas drone law as impinging on users’ freedom to collect and create content as protected by the First Amendment, and of defining reasons for those prohibitions in an overly vague and broad manner. He took particular issue with Chapter 423 of the Texas Government Code, and ordered state law police services to cease enforcing it.
“A person commits an offense if the person uses an unmanned aircraft to capture an image of an individual or privately owned real property in this state with the intent to conduct surveillance on the individual or property captured in the image,” Chapter 423 reads, drawing Pitman’s criticism that it cast far too wide and ill-defined a net to stand.
“Defendants urge an improperly narrow understanding of the Constitution that is without support in the law,” Pitman said in his ruling. “The process of creating the images finds just as much protection in the First Amendment as the images themselves do… (and that) as a matter of law, use of drones to document the news by journalists is protected expression and… implicates the First Amendment.”
The challenged Texas statutes prohibited legitimate newsgathering that causes no harm, and unconstitutionally drew distinctions that disallowed journalistic drone photography
https://dronedj.com/2022/03/31/texas-law-restricting-drone-use-upended-as-unconstitutional
I have noticed more than once that you're an enthusiastic photographer and a competent one too. There are plenty of good reasons to limit drone flying where it causes harm, but news is not harm. Anyway, glad that statute got clobbered.
ReplyDeleteawww, thanks! I used to do a lot more photography at car shows, concours especially, and I did enjoy the challenge of trying to make good photos, really good photos, and I hoped that I'd be able to do something with them, but posting them here was all that resulted. Not that that's bad, but I'd hoped for a job where I'd get paid to do this story and photos thing.
DeleteI can't think drones do much harm... except annoy the rich and powerful. I don't want them bothering the planes and helicopters, or the nesting birds, and that's all that comes to mind that is destructive. Oh, I suppose if some young pervs are using them to hunt through back yard pools for young bikini clad teens, that's not good. But flying a drone for incredibly good photos ought to be allowable when it causes no harm. After all, Google Maps has a good view of everything from the sky.
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