Originally Posted by
ECHO24
There are two basic arguments, (1) the FAA had meetings outside the NPRM process, and (2) the final rule is more about
identifying and reporting UAS traffic to authorities than air traffic management.
On the meetings my guess is the FAA has plenty of lawyers advising on what is or not in the scope of FAA's authority. On the
second, I'd have to read it again but I think the 2018 bill mandating Remote ID says that the primary purpose of Remote ID,
apart from the generic "integrating UAS into the national airspace system", is national security.
I think this is the section that you are thinking of:
(a) UAS SAFETY ENFORCEMENT.—The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration shall establish a pilot program to utilize available remote detection or identification technologies for safety oversight, including enforcement actions against operators of unmanned aircraft systems that are not in compliance with applicable Federal aviation laws, including regulations.
The bill also requires the FAA to begin development of a UTM and RID is mentioned here as a necessary component of any such UTM. There may be other mentions as well.
Regardless, unless they successfully argue that the very notion of RID itself is somehow unconstitutional (which is highly unlikely), then there is really nothing that this lawsuit can accomplish. Even if they roll back the current rule based on some technicality (like having "secret" meetings), the FAA will still be under legal mandate to deploy RID and will just be required to put forth some new rule that avoids those technical difficulties. My fear is that any such new rule could then be worse for the hobby. They are really playing with fire here, with very little hope for upside.