Drone Photographer Fails in Appeal of Surveyor Licensing Law

The owner of a drone photography company didn’t show his First Amendment rights were violated by a North Carolina law requiring him to get a surveyor’s license before he could offer aerial mapping services to his clients, the Fourth Circuit said Monday.

The law was sufficiently drawn to protect the state’s substantial interest in regualting surveyors, the appeals court said.

The law regulates “the practice of land surveying,” which it defines as “mapping, assembling, and interpreting reliable scientific measurements and information relative to the location, size, shape, or physical features of the earth, improvements on the earth, the space above ...