Nonprofit organization TechFreedom filed a petition against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) this week over the FAA’s regulatory requirement of the registration and $5 fee for drone hobbyists. President of TechFreedom said, “Whether or not requiring drone registration is a wise policy, the rules the FAA rushed out before Christmas are unlawful. The agency bypassed the most basic transparency requirements in administrative law: that it provide an opportunity for the affected public to comment on its regulations. That means the FAA could not fully consider the real-world complexities of regulating drones.”

TechFreedom’s suit stems from the FAA’s rule, which was released in December of last year, requiring drone users to register their name, address, and email address with the FAA, pay a registration fee, and obtain a certificate of registration with an identification number for their drone. TechFreedom says that the FAA is only permitted to require registration of aircrafts, not of the people operating them. This is surely only the beginning of the fight against the FAA’s regulation of drones. We will keep following the stories as they unfold.