Michigan Drone Lawsuit Challenges Restrictions on Flights Near Police Operations

Michigan man sues sheriff’s department over state’s drone law

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

A Michigan-based freelance journalist has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to have local law enforcement officials not target him for flying his drone near their operations, providing that he is following all federal flight safety regulations and maintaining a safe distance from police-operated UAVs.

In a suit filed August 9 in the U.S. District Court for The Eastern District of Michigan, Bay City photojournalist Ray Rocha is suing Bay County Sheriff Troy Cunningham and Deputy Chris Berg, who heads the sheriff department’s drone program. Rocha is a locally well-known UAV pilot, who posts drone-collected videos of events of public interest on his online platform Baycountylive.

The suit stems from an incident that occurred in November 2024, during which Rocha was operating his drone near the site of a police search for suspects. According to the suit, Berg, who was flying a police drone above the scene noticed Rocha’s UAV operating in the same general area.

According to the court filing, Berg then reportedly “called Central Dispatch and requested a broadcast directing any civilian drone near the incident to land. The broadcast did not identify an objective violation of a boundary limitation, altitude limitation, separation distance requirement, duration restriction, or federally issued temporary flight restriction.”

The lawsuit contains a link to a video Rocha shot of the incident, showing the distance separating the two UAVs. “The officer did not arrest Plaintiff Rocha, did not issue an unequivocal order to land, and told Plaintiff Rocha that the decision was up to him. The encounter ended amicably,” the filing states.

In his report on the incident, Berg said he considered Rocha’s actions to be in violation of the state’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Act, M.C.L. § 259.321. The following June, Rocha was charged with a misdemeanor under the statute for allegedly operating a drone in a manner that interfered with a police officer’s official duties.

Following a two-day trial, a six-person jury convicted Rocha on May 1, 2026. He was fined $575 and sentenced to one day in jail with credit for time served.

Rocha is not appealing his conviction in state court. Instead his federal case seeks to prevent police from charging him under the same law again, “unless his drone operation materially obstructs, hinders, delays, endangers, or physically disrupts” law enforcement operations, according to the suit.

The suit contends that the state’s drone law, as interpreted by the sheriff’s office and local prosecutors violated Rocha’s First Amendment right to use his drone to gather images used in the dissemination of information concerning newsworthy events. The lawsuit also asks the court to strike down the law as “unconstitutionally vague under the 14th Amendment because it fails to provide fair notice and delegates unbounded ad hoc enforcement discretion to individual officers.”

Suit challenges constitutionality of law

In an interview with DroneLife, Philip Ellison, an attorney for Rocha, said the suit could result in changes to the state law regarding drone operations near law enforcement scenes.

“If the federal court agrees with us and declares the law unconstitutional as written, it would simply cease to be legally available. And whether the (state) Legislature will decide to change or otherwise correct its shortcomings would be up to it.” he said.

Ellison said Rocha’s use of drone-captured images to report on the activities of local law enforcement and emergency personnel is well known around the Bay City community.

“He’s a guy that flies a drone when the police roll out to any sort of major event, and he records the interactions of the police and the public from the air with his camera-equipped drone,” Ellison said. “And he’s been not very well received by the local law enforcement. They just don’t like having him around.”

Ellison claimed that the 2024 incident that led to Rocha’s misdemeanor conviction his client did nothing to interfere with the operation of the police drone being flown by Berg.

“There was no, what I call a near miss or anything like that. They were on completely separate sides of the incident,” he said. The lawsuit contends that in his report on the incident Berg stated that “the civilian drone was not that close to the department drone.”

Ellison said that the state statute under which Rocha was prosecuted “basically creates a criminal wrong that just says you can’t ‘interfere’ with law enforcement. It’s unconstitutional because it’s vague.”

Despite his contention that Rocha was improperly convicted under the state law, Ellison said the current federal case does not seek to undo that conviction, but to preclude local authorities from trying to go after Rocha in the same way again.

“The problem is that Michigan’s courts have traditionally not been as protective of First Amendment rights as federal courts are. And you can’t use the federal court to undo a conviction, but you can use the federal court going forward to say, ‘Don’t ever charge him or convict him of this type of wrong ever again,’” he said.

Ellison said the filing of the federal suit shouldn’t be interpreted as blanket permission for private drone operators to fly so close to crime scenes that they put first responders or the public in danger, but rather that police agencies should respect the rights of drone pilots who are operating according to the rules, and allow them the freedom to collect information about the public operations of law enforcement officials.

“I’m cognizant of, and we’re not indifferent to, the needs of law enforcement. In fact, we want law enforcement to roll out and do their job, and we want them to do it well,” he said. “At the same time, there has to be enough space left open … legal space available so that citizen journalists and professional journalists and even Joe Blow with their iPhone on the sidewalk can record and be part of the interactions between the government and the public.”

Citing policy concerning ongoing litigation, a spokesman for the Bay City Sheriff’s department declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Read more:

• North Carolina Drone Operator to Seek Further Review in First Amendment Lawsuit
• Photojournalist Challenges FAA Temporary Flight Restriction as First Amendment Violation
• Controversial Texas Drone Law Re-Instated, in a Blow for Journalists