California Bill Would Ban Drones Over Concerts, Sports, and Festivals

AB 2113 does not try to regulate the air over a concert. It regulates the act of flying there. That is the choice that has carried the bill through two legislative committees with no opposition, and it is the reason the bill now faces a single procedural deadline: the California Senate Appropriations Committee must act before August 31, 2026.

The bill, Assembly Bill 2113 by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, a Democrat from Inglewood who represents the 61st Assembly District, would create a state-law infraction for operating a drone within 400 feet of an outdoor ticketed entertainment event or amusement park. A violation is punishable by a $500 civil fine, the lowest tier of California penalty. Emergency responders and law enforcement are exempt.

The protected spaces under the bill's text are outdoor venues that seat at least 1,000 people, are gated or barriered, and require a ticket. Amusement parks are covered separately. McKinnor has framed the legislation as preparation for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games and as protection for large California gatherings, naming Coachella, BottleRock, Stagecoach, La Onda, Beyond Wonderland SoCal, and Aftershock as motivating use cases.

A 400-foot ceiling is well below the height of most professional drone operations and far below the ceiling for aircraft the Federal Aviation Administration licenses. The bill's enforcement lever is also narrow. It does not give officers new airspace authority. It creates a state-law infraction for the act of operating a drone in a defined zone and leaves the underlying flight rules to the FAA.

The federalism argument, the one McKinnor made to colleagues and the one the bill's structure embodies, runs like this. Airspace in the United States is a federal authority, and the FAA sets the rules for who can fly, where, and how high. Local police and sheriff's departments have authority on the ground, including crowd safety, but they have not had a clear tool to act on the small aircraft that fans and others sometimes fly over events. The federal government can set Temporary Flight Restrictions, or TFRs, around marquee events like the Super Bowl; those have historically covered 30 nautical miles, about 18,000 feet, and prohibited most drone flights outright, per the Assembly Appropriations Committee's analysis. AB 2113 does not reach that far. It covers more venues at a much smaller radius and works through operator behavior rather than airspace.

The Assembly passed it on May 18, 2026, by a bipartisan 72-0 vote, with 54 Democrats and 18 Republicans in favor. The Senate Public Safety Committee cleared it 6-0 on June 30. It was amended in the Senate on August 4 and referred to Appropriations, the second-to-last committee before a floor vote. The Aug. 31 deadline is an Appropriations suspension; bills that do not clear the committee by that date are shelved for the year.

Josh Stevens, senior manager of government affairs at Live Nation Entertainment, the concert and live-events giant, is the named sponsor. No committee member voted against it in either chamber. The only organized opposition has come from the commercial drone industry. The Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, the trade group for the commercial drone sector, told the Assembly Appropriations Committee it supports the public-safety goal but wants a carve-out for cargo, surveying, and infrastructure inspection flights near entertainment venues.

The committee staff analysis, posted in April, flagged the same concern, asking whether the bill as written sweeps in licensed commercial operators who need to fly near entertainment districts for reasons that have nothing to do with the events. Mason Sisk, the group's director of government affairs, made the same point in testimony.

The Senate Appropriations Committee will decide whether to add a commercial-operator exemption, send the bill to a floor vote as written, or let the Aug. 31 deadline pass. If the bill clears, it would still need a final floor vote in the Senate and a concurrence vote in the Assembly before going to the governor.

McKinnor chairs the Assembly's Select Committee on the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games and is a member of the California Legislative Black Caucus. The bill's structure is the reason it has moved this far this fast: a near-term Olympic deadline for the author, a named commercial sponsor, an industry opponent narrow enough to negotiate with, and a mechanism that treats operator behavior as a state matter and airspace as a federal one.