FAA & Photojournalist Rob Levine: The DHS Drone Ban Just Got Its First Federal Court Challenge

Minneapolis-based photojournalist Rob Levine filed a petition for judicial review Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, directly challenging NOTAM FDC 6/4375 — the FAA security notice that bans all drone flights within 3,000 feet laterally and 1,000 feet vertically of Department of Homeland Security facilities and mobile assets, including unmarked vehicles. He is represented by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

• The Development: NOTAM FDC 6/4375, issued January 16, 2026, creates a nationwide moving no-fly zone around DHS vehicles, including unmarked ICE cars. There is no way to check compliance before you fly — the restriction doesn’t appear on B4UFLY, AirControl, LAANC, or the FAA TFR map.
• The Legal Challenge: Levine and the Reporters Committee argue the NOTAM violates the Administrative Procedure Act, is unconstitutionally vague, and has had a chilling effect on First Amendment newsgathering rights — raising First and Fifth Amendment concerns about fair notice of what conduct is prohibited.
• The “So What?”: Every Part 107 pilot in the country is potentially flying in violation of this restriction right now and has no practical way to know it.
• The Sources: Minnesota Reformer and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The Compliance Problem Behind This Lawsuit

NOTAM FDC 6/4375 prohibits all unmanned aircraft from operating within 3,000 feet laterally and 1,000 feet vertically of any active DOD, DOE, or DHS facility or mobile asset, including ground vehicle convoys and their escorts. The FAA classifies these areas as National Defense Airspace under 49 U.S.C. Section 40103(b)(3). No fixed coordinates are published. No activation times are announced. No end date exists. And no flight planning tool shows this restriction in real time — publishing it would broadcast the real-time location of federal agents operating in American cities.

That’s the core of the vagueness argument. Grayson Clary, a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee, put it plainly: “You have no way of knowing in advance before you fire up the drone whether you are within a prohibited distance of, say, an unmarked car that ICE is using for immigration enforcement.”

This is the same structural problem DroneXL flagged in January when the NOTAM first appeared. Due process requires fair notice of what conduct is prohibited. This restriction makes compliance structurally impossible for any pilot who doesn’t already know where DHS is operating. The petition adds an APA count — arguing the FAA exceeded its statutory authority and failed to follow required notice-and-comment rulemaking — which may prove to be the most actionable path in the D.C. Circuit.

Levine’s History Makes Him the Right Plaintiff

Levine isn’t a test-case plaintiff with no skin in the game. In 2016, when the FAA issued a TFR over the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota, the agency initially denied his request to fly — then reversed and granted him a limited three-day waiver, making him the only journalist to get aerial access to the site. He knows exactly what it means when airspace restrictions coincide with politically sensitive federal operations, and he knows how hard it is to get a workable answer out of the FAA when an exemption process exists only on paper.

The new restriction stopped him cold. “Seeing how these federal agents treated constitutional observers, I was truly worried that going out and flying, I could get arrested, have my drone destroyed, and be roughed up, like they did to so many of those constitutional observers,” Levine said.

That’s a rational calculation given the FAA’s Change 13 enforcement escalation, which now routes NOTAM violations directly to the Chief Counsel’s office with criminal charges, civil penalties, and aircraft seizure all on the table.

Press Freedom Groups Have Been Pushing Back Since January

This lawsuit doesn’t arrive in a vacuum. On January 28, a coalition including the New York Times, Washington Post, and the National Press Photographers Association sent a letter to the FAA arguing the flight restrictions violate the First and Fifth Amendments. NPPA President Alex Garcia called it “a constantly shifting restricted airspace that journalists have no practical way to identify or avoid.”

Clary went further, suggesting the chilling effect on First Amendment activity was intentional: “Which, candidly, I think, is likely what was intended.”

This follows a well-documented pattern. In October 2025, DHS closed 935 square miles of Chicago airspace during Operation Midway Blitz — the largest civilian drone ban in U.S. history. Federal drones and helicopters flew surveillance overhead while every civilian drone operator, including journalists, was grounded. The NOTAM issued January 16 took that Chicago model and made it permanent, borderless, and nationwide. DroneXL reported in February that a revised NOTAM had reportedly been drafted by the FAA, but that a separate federal agency — widely believed to be DHS — was blocking its release.

DroneXL’s Take

I’ve been checking the FAA’s SOSC email process since we first reported on NOTAM FDC 6/4375 in late January. As of early March, what comes back is boilerplate that refers you to the same tools that don’t show the restriction. Nothing actionable. That’s the system a Part 107 pilot is supposed to use to verify compliance with airspace that could materialize around any unmarked car in any city in America.

Levine v. FAA is the legal challenge I predicted was coming. The ACLU had been preparing one. The Reporters Committee got there first, and they chose the right plaintiff — someone with a documented history of navigating exactly these restrictions, someone whose chilling effect is real and provable, not hypothetical.

The First Amendment argument is strong. The APA count may be stronger still — courts are faster with statutory violations than constitutional ones, and “failed to follow notice-and-comment” is a cleaner kill shot than “unconstitutionally vague.” The government’s counterargument will likely rest on national security deference. Watch whether the D.C. Circuit applies the heightened scrutiny it has used in press access cases, or lets the security rationale swallow the First Amendment claim the way it did in some post-9/11 airspace cases.

If the FAA argues pilots bear the burden of compliance with a restriction that is deliberately unpublishable, the court will ask the obvious question: how? The restriction either gets narrowed significantly or DHS defends it before the D.C. Circuit — and that’s a fight the agency may not win. Expect a revised NOTAM to appear within 60 days of the court setting a briefing schedule, as the FAA tries to moot the case before oral argument.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.

Photo credit: DJI