Arizona could soon join a growing list of places trying to draw hard lines around where drones can fly—but the latest push is colliding with a First Amendment fight.
Sen. Tim Dunn, a Yuma Republican, is sponsoring Senate Bill 1160 after operators of Phoenix International Raceway raised concerns that drones over their events could become a hazard if they fell into a crowd. His original idea was simple enough on paper: make it illegal to fly a drone within 400 feet—altitude or distance—from any “ticketed entertainment event.”
As the bill picked up momentum, though, it got bigger. Versions moving through the process now create a one-mile “bubble” around sporting events, concerts, and any other paid gathering, including outdoor events and venues with retractable roofs. Supporters say the goal is public safety, and they’ve pointed to backing from NASCAR, the Arizona Cardinals, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and Live Nation Entertainment.
House Majority Leader Michael Carbone, also a Republican, said the expanded zone was designed so drone operators don’t try to “steal” the show. “We do respect property rights,” Carbone said, arguing the bill targets situations with “a willful intent … to take information that’s from someone else’s property.” It’s the kind of argument that lands differently depending on whether you’re imagining a hobbyist camera or something more purposeful—especially when the bill would treat routine drone flights as a criminal offense.
Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a Scottsdale Republican, is arguing the bill is overbroad and could sweep in people who never intended to cause harm. Kolodin said the restriction would effectively place a zone around events where drones couldn’t fly at all, and he warned that the measure would risk turning Arizonans—including members of the media—into criminals. His alternative framing is blunt: if the intent was only to stop unauthorized recordings of live performances, he said, lawmakers could require consent from event organizers rather than banning drone flights broadly.
In the text as written, Kolodin said any person flying a drone within a mile of a ticketed event—and not just directly above it—is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. That includes anyone flying around to look at traffic or other conditions. The penalty, he said, can reach up to six months in jail and a $2,500 fine. Kolodin also said he was surprised that an Arizona media group—whose membership includes radio and TV stations, newspapers, and digital operations—had not weighed in, and Lisa Simpson, the group’s senior vice president, said she had no comment.
Kolodin’s critique doesn’t stop at filming. He argued that even people who live within a mile of an event could still be limited in what they do. Under the measure, drone operators would be allowed to fly above their own property, but commercial use would be prohibited—and that prohibition extends to communication. Kolodin described a scenario involving a speaker drone sending a political or social message while staying within city noise limits, and he said the bill would expressly bar that. He also suggested the rules could even restrict creative forms of messaging, like programming drones to create patterns in lights—like spelling out a message. “We could think of a situation where we have a speaker on the drone,” he said, and then trailed into the bigger point that restricting that kind of communication raises a clear First Amendment violation.
There’s already precedent for part of Dunn’s safety rationale, Kolodin acknowledged—but Dunn said the state measure would simply extend what federal authorities do. The Federal Aviation Authority already prohibits drones within three miles of major sporting events that seat 30,000 or more people for an hour before and after an event, when a “National Defense Airspace” is declared. Dunn’s view is that SB 1160 would apply the same safety concept to smaller events, like concerts and other outdoor gatherings. On a recent evening at a stadium, the air can feel thick with anticipation—one of those moments where it’s easy to understand why someone worries about a drone falling. But the same buzz, he argued, doesn’t justify broad criminalization.
One big wrinkle is that Dunn says this probably won’t be the end of the story. Senate and House both have approved versions of his plan, but he said he’s open to tweaking language as long as the bill keeps what he calls the focus: crowd safety. Kolodin, for his part, seemed to doubt that the supporters’ “safety” framing matches what the bill actually does. He accused backers of looking at it through the lens of protecting live-event recordings—and he questioned why major stakeholders would want a rule that’s far too broad for that stated purpose.
As the debate plays out, the debate is basically about where the line should be drawn: between preventing hazards and limiting speech. And in a state where events bring crowds so large they can shake a city’s tempo, the question of how close a drone should be to that moment is going to matter—maybe more than anyone first expected.
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