https://qz.com/987793/us-drone-owners-no-longer-have-to-register-their-drones-with-the-faa-for-5/?ex_cid=SigDig

The US court of appeals in Washington, DC, ruled today that the
Federal Aviation Administration’s rule forcing registration of drones under 55
lbs is unlawful. In the eyes of the court, it seems these are really just model
aircraft.

John Taylor, a lawyer and drone hobbyist based in the DC area brought the
lawsuit against the FAA. His argument hinged on a clause in the FAA
Modernization and Reform Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by
president Barack Obama in 2012, which in part provided the impetus for the FAA’s
recent initiatives to regulate commercial drone operations and create an
air-traffic management system for autonomous drones.

Section 336 of that act says that the FAA “may not promulgate any rule or
regulation regarding a model aircraft,” essentially suggesting that whatever new
rules it created couldn’t affect radio-controlled hobby aircraft. This meant
that model aircraft were exempt from the FAA’s hobby-drone registration push, a
push the FAA maintained even though, ostensibly, a drone controlled by a smart
phone or radio controller doesn’t act much differently from a model helicopter
controlled by a radio controller. It seems that the appellate court agreed with
this logic, and ruled that if model aircraft are exempt from registration
regulations, small hobby drones should be as well.