Includes The Phrase 'City Airspace'

A proposed law limiting the use of drones in Evanston, IL introduced at a City Council meeting Monday night would be open to challenges based on some of the language in the bill, according to legal analysts.

The website Evanston Now reports that Jeffrey Antonelli, a Chicago attorney specializing in drone law, the city is attempting to regulate airspace, which is clearly in the purview of the federal government.

The law is being sponsored by Alderman Melissa Wynne, who said a local child had been hit by a drone on a local playground. Because of that, she would like to severely limit recreational drone use in the city.

The law draws heavily on Chicago's ordinance which requires a drone operator to obtain permission from any landowner over which the drone might fly in "city airspace." But the only definition of "city airspace" in the ordinance is that it is airspace that is "within the jurisdiction of the city."

The federal government has precluded local jurisdictions from regulating airspace at an altitude above 500 feet, but some analysts say that the federal government has the right to control airspace down to ground level.

The Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York said in a recent report that at least 135 communities in 31 states have passed local drone regulations, and that many of them could "contravene federal authority, and could result in legal conflict."

(Image from file)

FMI: Original Story, Bard College Report