Reason writes
A California county has agreed to effectively end a controversial warrantless drone surveillance operation that was launched to monitor unpermitted cannabis grows but secretly morphed into a wider search for innocuous building code violations.
The program in Sonoma County, about an hour north of San Francisco, ultimately saddled homeowners with enormous fines for ordinary—and often disputed—code violations which residents said were punitive and aggressively levied.
Over several years, dozens of residents were issued swiftly increasing fines, sometimes reaching six figures, and some had their properties foreclosed and were left homeless. The county issued at least $3 million in civil cannabis fines in cases involving warrantless surveillance.
In June 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California and law firm O’Melveny & Myers accused Sonoma County of an illegal “runaway spying operation” and of violating the state constitution in a lawsuit on behalf of three affected residents.
In a settlement announced Wednesday, Sonoma said it would use drones to fly over or monitor a home only after obtaining a warrant, except in certain limited situations such as emergencies.
Sonoma’s drone surveillance frequently found no unpermitted cannabis grows at all. Instead, drone imagery became a tool for ordinary code enforcement: unpermitted decks, trailers, fences, grading, outbuildings, and old cars. By 2023, 70 percent of drone flights ostensibly searching for cannabis found no cannabis violation. Records showed the county had amassed 5,600 photographs from 700 flights since 2019.
The county’s original funding application said drones would focus on “remote cultivation sites,” but officials subsequently authorised “discretionary proactive investigations.”
“They effectively shut down cannabis [industry] growth in the county,” said Nick Hidalgo, a senior attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. “It dropped dramatically. They had no other reason to fly these drones, and so they expanded into all of these other purposes.”
Hidalgo said the settlement would protect residents’ privacy after what he described as an “unlawful” campaign that county officials attempted to conceal from residents and the media. Code enforcement officers flew drones “of their own volition without cause trying to find code violations,” he said.
The county agreed to pay $50,000 to each of the plaintiffs, including Nichola Schmitz, who is deaf and learned only from a neighbor in 2023 that a warrantless drone flight over her rural farm had gathered evidence of alleged code violations.
“No one should have to be afraid to open their blinds or step into their own backyard because a government drone might be watching,” Schmitz said in a press release issued by the ACLU of Northern California. She was fined thousands of dollars by the county, which put a lien on her property that caused significant personal stress.
Residents who lost their homes after the county used evidence obtained through warrantless drone flights hope the settlement could strengthen their own legal challenges.
“I think that this is going to open them up to other lawsuits,” said Keni Meyer, a dog trainer who lost her home near Sebastopol after the county claimed a bevy of minor code violations. “I’ve got a court date on October 27, and I could possibly get my house back. We’re going to keep fighting for it.”
For more than a year, she has been living in a trailer park following a chaotic forced eviction in June 2025 from her foreclosed home after she was hit with more than $375,000 in fines. “I never would have imagined in Sonoma County that this could have happened,” she added. “It would have been the last county in the world that I thought people would be so cruel and so cold.”
The three cases that the ACLU took up were just “the tip of the iceberg,” with one elderly resident in Cazadero recently losing his home, Meyer said. “There are so many more complicated cases with much more vulnerable people.”
Residents described drones hovering over pools, hot tubs, children’s play areas, and backyard gatherings. Some complained that drones could see through windows or capture them while naked. The county had already paused its warrantless drone campaign last year, according to the ACLU of Northern California, amid negotiations regarding the lawsuit.
“There’s something even creepier about surveilling kids just having a fun time swimming in their home pool,” said Hidalgo. “That kind of expression of personal autonomy is incredibly chilled if the government can be watching you at any time.”
Now, in addition to requiring a warrant in most circumstances, the county must inform residents if their home has been surveilled with a drone. Sonoma also agreed to stop stockpiling images of people’s homes and to delete drone footage 30 days after collection unless it forms part of an investigation. To help ensure compliance, the county must provide drone flight logs to the ACLU of Northern California every six months for two years.
“Forty years ago, the California supreme court prohibited the government from conducting aerial surveillance of people’s homes and the surrounding areas without a warrant,” reads the ACLU of Northern California press release. “Today’s settlement reaffirms that constitutional protection, which is more critical now than ever before as high-powered drones make it so much easier for government agencies to pry into people’s lives.”
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