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Tennessee Drone Laws: Where to Find the Official Rules

Tennessee's drone laws focus on privacy and surveillance rather than on where you may fly: using a drone to capture images of people or private property with intent to conduct surveillance is a criminal offense, police need a warrant to gather evidence by drone, and it's illegal to use a drone to monitor hunters or anglers without consent. Tennessee has no blanket preemption statute, so cities and counties can add their own rules — Metro Nashville, for example, restricts drones in county parks — and Tennessee State Parks require written park-manager approval before takeoff or landing.

Can cities and counties in Tennessee add their own drone rules?

Cities & counties may add their own rules

This state has no blanket preemption statute, so cities and counties can adopt their own drone ordinances — especially takeoff and landing rules in local parks. Always check the local code where you plan to fly.

Official Tennessee sources

These links go directly to government and primary sources. They open in a new tab.

Official statute text

Local rules we've verified in Tennessee

This is not every local ordinance in the state — only localities where we've confirmed an official source. To check any other city or county, use the look-up workflow on the regulations hub .

What Tennessee’s drone statutes actually cover

Tennessee regulates drone conduct, not airspace. The key statutes, in plain English:

  • Surveillance and image capture (§§ 39-13-901 to 39-13-907). Using a drone to capture an image of a person or privately owned property with the intent to conduct surveillance is a Class C misdemeanor — and each captured image can be a separate offense. Certain conduct is penalized more heavily (up to a Class E felony), including flying over ticketed open-air events. Section 39-13-902 lists the purposes for which drone image capture is lawful, and later amendments added critical-infrastructure protections to the same part of the code.
  • Law-enforcement drones (§ 39-13-609). The Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act requires police to satisfy warrant requirements before using a drone to gather evidence, with narrow exceptions, and gives people standing to sue over violations.
  • Hunting and fishing (§ 70-4-302). It is an offense to use a drone to conduct video surveillance of people who are lawfully hunting or fishing without their written consent.
  • Trespass (§ 39-14-405). Tennessee’s criminal-trespass statute has been applied to low-altitude drone intrusions over private land.

A note on the official text: unlike most states, the Tennessee General Assembly does not publish code text on its own website — the official free public-access portal is hosted by LexisNexis (first link above). The per-section links go to Justia’s mirror, clearly labeled, so you can jump straight to each section; for anything consequential, confirm the text on the official portal.

Local rules

Tennessee has no statute preempting local drone ordinances, so cities and counties can and do regulate drones on property they control. The clearest example is Nashville: Metro Code § 13.24.400 restricts drones in Davidson County parks to three designated flying areas (Warner, Peeler, and Cane Ridge parks), and only with a Metro Parks permit. If you fly elsewhere in Tennessee, check that city or county’s code using the look-up workflow on the regulations hub.