Across much of American agriculture, uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS)[i] are quickly moving from niche to mainstream equipment. Between 2020 and 2024, the domestic agricultural UAS market doubled in size to $506 million and is expected to approach $1.76 billion by 2030.[ii] This technology has found use throughout the crop cycle, from mapping fields and flagging early crop stress with multispectral imagery to applying pesticides by air. The market for US commercial and recreational UAS has historically been dominated by Chinese manufacturer Shenzhen Da-Jiang Innovations Science and Technology Co., Ltd. (DJI),[iii] and its agricultural platforms have become the standard choice for many farming operations.
That reliance now collides with federal restrictions. On December 22, 2025, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) added all foreign-made UAS and their critical components to its “Covered List,” a designation that cuts off the equipment authorizations required to market, sell, or import new models in the US. DJI and Autel Robotics Co., Ltd., a smaller Chinese manufacturer, are contesting the FCC's action on several legal fronts. DJI has petitioned the FCC for reconsideration and, on a parallel track, sought review in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Autel has filed applications for review with the full Commission, challenging both the listing and the revocation of authorizations it had already been granted. These filings advance broadly overlapping objections, namely that (1) the FCC overran the authority Congress gave it, and (2) branding their products "covered" without proper notice or an opportunity to respond violated the Fifth Amendment.
Statutory and Regulatory Background
The FCC’s Covered List and the Secure Networks Act
The Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 directs the FCC to maintain a published list of communications equipment and services that pose national security risks (the Covered List).[iv] The Act reaches equipment capable of routing or redirecting user data, permitting visibility into it, or remotely disrupting a provider’s network, as well as any equipment “otherwise posing an unacceptable risk” to national security or to the security and safety of US persons. The equipment must also be “essential to the provision of advanced communications service.”[v]
Congress specifically limited the sources and standard of adding to this list. The statute states that the Commission "shall place" equipment or a service on the list "if and only if" it poses an unacceptable risk to national security or to the security and safety of US persons, and it may act based "solely" on one or more of four enumerated determinations.[vi] These four sources are an executive branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise; the Department of Commerce, in limited circumstances; equipment already treated as "covered" under the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA); or an appropriate national security agency.[vii]
Importantly, the phrase “appropriate national security agency” carries a fixed statutory definition, supplied in Section 9 of the Secure Networks Act. Section 9 names five agencies under this umbrella: the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense (now the Department of War, or DoW),[viii] the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[ix]
Section 1709 of the 2025 NDAA
The 2025 NDAA singled out DJI and Autel under the Covered List framework, converting the Act's discretionary listing process into a directed, deadline-bound one for their equipment. Section 1709(a)(1) directs an appropriate national security agency to determine, within one year of enactment, whether communications or video surveillance equipment produced by DJI or Autel poses an unacceptable risk. If the agency finds such a risk, the Commission must place the equipment on the Covered List.[x] Should no appropriate national security agency make any determination within the one-year window, the FCC “shall add all communications equipment and services” identified in the section to the list automatically, without any finding that the named companies’ products actually pose a risk.[xi]
The FCC’s December 2025 Decision
The FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau administers the Covered List under authority delegated by the full Commission. The Bureau issued its listing decision one day before the Section 1709 deadline, adding all foreign-produced UAS and UAS critical components as a class. It also reached further for DJI and Autel in particular, adding all communications equipment, video surveillance technology, and services from both companies (effectively barring future domestic business). The Bureau rested this decision on a national security assessment issued the previous day “by an Executive Branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise,” concluding that the assessment qualified as a specific determination obligating the Commission to update the list. The listing was then used to set aside equipment authorizations granted in the preceding thirty days.
On January 7, 2026, following a further determination by the DoW, the Bureau exempted certain categories of foreign UAS and critical components from the list until January 1, 2027. This exemption did not include any DJI or Autel product.
Current Litigation
DJI’s Petition for Reconsideration
DJI petitioned the FCC for reconsideration on January 21, 2026, arguing that the interagency assessment was neither the “specific determination” the statute demands nor a determination by an “appropriate national security agency”; that its addition to the list denied it due process; and that the Section 1709(a)(2) default on which the listing may rest is unconstitutional.
DJI contended that the Bureau exceeded its statutory authority because the interagency assessment was not a “specific determination.” The assessment discussed the general risks that foreign-made UAS can present and never named DJI or analyzed any DJI product. The company read the Secure Networks Act’s references to equipment “produced or provided by such entity” in 47 U.S.C. § 1601(b)(1) as a command for entity- and product-specific findings, and it pointed to the Commission’s four prior listing decisions, each of which added only identified products from identified manufacturers.
Additionally, DJI argued the assessment did not come from an “appropriate national security agency.” An interagency body, in its reading, is a distinct source under the statute from the five named agencies, and the NDAA specifically routed the DJI determination to one of those agencies. The Bureau’s own notice, DJI observed, acknowledged that Section 1709 calls for an agency determination rather than an interagency-body determination.
DJI further raised due process deficiencies. Addition to the list, the company claimed, deprives it of a protected liberty interest in operating its chosen business, branding it a security risk and foreclosing the US market without advance warning or a hearing. DJI grounded that objection in Ralls v. CFIUS, a 2014 D.C. Circuit decision requiring notice, access to the unclassified evidence, and a chance to rebut before a deprivation of this kind takes effect.[xii] DJI also distinguished its case from the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Huawei v. FCC, where the challenged designation carried pre-deprivation procedures that the listing here lacked.[xiii]
Finally, DJI attacked the constitutionality of the Section 1709(a)(2) default listing procedure. If this default provision supplied the authority for the listing, DJI argued that it cannot stand. It violates equal protection and effectively operates as an unconstitutional bill of attainder by naming DJI and imposing what functions as punishment without a finding of risk.[xiv] DJI contrasted the record behind the TikTok divestiture statute, which the D.C. Circuit sustained on agency findings specific to that platform.[xv]
In the alternative, DJI asked the Commission to confirm that the listing cannot reach products falling outside the statutory definitions of communications and video surveillance equipment. Those definitions turn on equipment “essential to” advanced communications service, which DJI said excludes most of its catalog. By the company’s own estimate, the listing and set-asides deprive DJI of roughly $700 million tied to set-asides of fourteen existing products and roughly $860 million tied to twenty-five models slated for release in 2026.
Autel’s Applications for Review
Autel is contesting the FCC’s actions through two applications for review to the full Commission. The first challenges the December 23, 2025 decision by the Laboratory Division of the Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) setting aside six equipment authorizations for several of its UAS models that the FCC had already granted the month before. That set-aside rested entirely on the December 22 Public Notice. OET reasoned that, because the Notice rendered the equipment “covered,” the prior grants no longer complied with the rules and could be vacated under 47 C.F.R. § 2.962(f).
The heart of this application is an objection to retroactive rulemaking. Autel primarily argued that no statute or rule lets the FCC undo a lawfully issued authorization on the strength of a Covered List designation that postdates the grant, and that treating a later classification as a present-tense compliance failure is impermissible retroactive rulemaking absent a clear congressional command.[xvi] Autel claimed that the FCC rules cut against OET on their own terms. Section 2.962(f) permits a set-aside only within thirty days of grant and only for noncompliance measured against the requirements in force when the grant issued, while Section 2.911(d)’s certification duty runs through grant and no further. By Autel’s count, one authorization was set aside more than thirty days out, exceeding the window outright. Autel then turned the FCC’s own words against the Bureau, invoking the December 22 Fact Sheet and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s statement that the restrictions reach only new device models and leave previously approved products undisturbed. The authorizations were pulled with no notice and no hearing, despite Autel’s property interest in the grants and its liberty interest in selling into the US market.
The second application reaches the listing itself. Autel contended that the Bureau exceeded the bounds of the Secure Networks Act, which covers only communications equipment essential to advanced communications service and produced by an entity determined to pose an unacceptable risk. It cannot function as an industry-wide prohibition on all foreign-made UAS untethered to any entity-specific finding; Section 1709 establishes a determination process, not a freestanding power to ban a market segment. The application also renewed the due process objection in this posture, arguing that the designation forecloses US market access without notice, without disclosure of the factual basis, and without any individualized process. It separately attacked the January 7 exemption framework for extending relief to similarly situated foreign manufacturers while excluding Autel without an articulated, risk-based justification for the line drawn.
The Oppositions
The DoW filed a memorandum with the FCC opposing both DJI’s and Autel’s challenges on April 6, 2026. The memorandum meets DJI’s central statutory argument head-on, asserting that the DoW participated in the executive branch interagency body that determined foreign-produced UAS and UAS critical components pose an unacceptable risk. The DoW characterized that participation as satisfying its role as an “appropriate national security agency” under both the Secure Networks Act and Section 1709. It claimed that the determination drew on classified and unclassified information transmitted to Congress on April 3, as Section 1709(b)(1)(B) requires. The opposition thus framed the interagency assessment as a vehicle through which the qualifying agencies reached and expressed their judgment, rather than a substitute for an agency decision.
The DoW’s memorandum was one entry in a much larger record. The paired dockets drew hundreds of submissions from drone operators, public safety agencies, and agricultural users, many urging the FCC to reverse course. Those parties filing in opposition to DJI and Autel argued chiefly that Chinese data-security law could compel disclosure of US user data, that the manufacturers’ corporate structures conceal government or foreign-military ties, and that the UAS’s data-collection practices leave operational data exposed to misuse.
DJI’s Reply
DJI’s May 11 reply to the public comments pressed the same two statutory hooks and the due process objection. It argued that no commenter defends the Covered List assessment as product-specific, so reading the statute to permit category-wide listing would raise major-questions concerns, i.e., Courts will not read a vague statute to hand an agency sweeping new authority without a clear signal from Congress. Other agency actions invoked by the oppositions, DJI argued, neither supply the pre-deprivation process Ralls demands nor themselves satisfy it. Regarding the commenters’ foreign threat theories, DJI reaffirmed that its drones offer a local, offline data mode, store any US user data domestically, and rest majority ownership with the company’s founders rather than any Chinese government entity. The reply further noted that the DoW did not submit its unclassified justification and classified annex to Congress until April 2026 (months after the December listing and past the statutory deadline), which it casts as impermissible post-hoc rationalization.
Autel’s Reply
Autel’s reply, filed the same day as DJI, treated the DoW’s reliance on undisclosed material as confirming the constitutional defect rather than curing it. Ralls tolerated the withholding of classified information; what it did not tolerate was a deprivation imposed without access to the unclassified basis for the decision. As with DJI, Autel objected that the unclassified justification did not reach the record until April. Against the private oppositions, Autel claimed that US customer data is stored on US servers and has never been transmitted to the Chinese government. Most of the foreign-threat allegations in the record, Autel asserted, concern either DJI or entities with the “Autel” branding that are distinct from Autel Robotics. Running through the reply is a refusal to be treated as interchangeable with DJI, or to be judged by nationality and product category rather than on company-specific evidence.
Taking the Case to Federal Court
On February 20, 2026, DJI took the fight into federal court, petitioning the Ninth Circuit for review of the December 22 listing. The petition invokes the framework for direct appellate review of final FCC orders, asserting jurisdiction under 47 U.S.C. § 402(a) and venue under 28 U.S.C. § 2343 on the basis of DJI’s subsidiary residence in the circuit. It reasserts the same three theories raised at the agency—that the Commission exceeded its statutory authority, bypassed required procedures, and violated the Fifth Amendment—and asks the court to set aside the listing as unlawful.
The FCC moved to dismiss the petition on March 6, 2026, arguing that the case had come to court too soon. The listing, it said, was the work of a subordinate Bureau rather than the full Commission, so it was not the kind of final order that federal law makes reviewable, and DJI had to wait for the full Commission to rule on its pending requests before going to court. DJI opposed the FCC’s motion on April 15, maintaining that the listing was final and self-executing the day it issued, and asked the court to hold the case in abeyance while the Commission acts. On May 28, 2026, the Ninth Circuit denied the motion to dismiss, directing the FCC to reassert its jurisdictional arguments in an answering brief, and granted DJI’s request to pause proceedings pending FCC action on DJI’s administrative petition. DJI’s opening brief is due November 2, 2026, and the Commission’s answering brief a month after that.[xvii]
Also worth noting is a separate case DJI is pursuing in the D.C. Circuit. In September 2025, the US District Court for the District of Columbia upheld DJI’s designation under Section 1260H of the 2021 NDAA as a Chinese military company,[xviii] and DJI appealed to the D.C. Circuit the following month.[xix] The district court rejected most of the government’s specific allegations against DJI while sustaining the designation on the agency’s broad national-security discretion. That designation is distinct from the Covered List proceedings, even as it arises from the same broader federal stance toward the company.
Observations
The Statutory Dispute
DJI's position on who may make the unacceptable-risk determination seems more faithful to the statute's text. The 2025 NDAA does not merely suggest where listing determinations for these companies should come from. It routes them to "an appropriate national security agency," which the statute defines as one of the five agencies enumerated in 47 U.S.C. § 1608(2). An "executive branch interagency body" appears separately in the same provision, as its own source of the "specific determinations" that support a listing. We must presume that Congress acted deliberately in choosing between two terms it defined separately, and Section 1709 squarely chose the agency route. The DoW's answer, that it sat on the body and voiced its judgment through it, asks courts to treat participation in one enumerated source as satisfying a directive to use another, which leaves the enumeration with no work to do. The Bureau's notice conceded the distinction when it observed that Section 1709 calls for an agency determination, and concessions of that kind tend to follow a party into court.
The government's real counterweight is substance over form. The DoW did reach a judgment, and it did transmit the classified annex Congress required. Section 1709(b)(1)(B), however, gave it thirty days from the determination to do so. The report arrived on April 3, roughly ten weeks late and months after the listing. That delay drains the argument of much of its force. It also hands DJI a ready charge of after-the-fact justification.
The government's footing is weaker still on what a "specific determination" must actually contain. Its strongest reply to the complaint that the assessment never named DJI or Autel is that Congress supplied the specificity itself by naming both companies in Section 1709. Whatever that answer is worth for DJI and Autel products, it does nothing for the listing's actual scope. The listing of all foreign-produced UAS as a class, from any manufacturer, rested on no entity determination at all. The litigation could well split along that line, leaving a listing sustainable only as to the two named companies and weakest where it reaches everyone else. If an interagency assessment produced on the eve of a deadline satisfies the statute, the requirement that a listing follow a qualifying determination and nothing else does little work, with the evidentiary threshold for every future addition to the Covered List dropping alongside it.
What Due Process is Owed?
Ralls gives the petitioners’ due process objection a strong opening hand. In that case, the D.C. Circuit reviewed an order forcing the Chinese-owned Ralls Corporation to unwind its purchase of four Oregon wind farm projects. Ralls received considerably more process than either DJI or Autel. After an interagency committee initiated review of its wind-farm acquisition, Ralls filed a notice and made an appearance before the committee in support of the transaction. What the government failed to provide in that case was the specific basis for its actions; the committee and then the President ordered divestiture without disclosing the unclassified evidence behind the judgment or affording a chance to rebut it, and the D.C. Circuit held that omission constitutionally fatal.[xx] Measured against that baseline, the Covered List proceeding compares unfavorably. Neither DJI nor Autel was notified that a listing was imminent, invited to present, or shown any portion of the assessment before the deprivation took effect, and the unclassified justification did not reach the record until April.
Section 1709(a)(2)’s Constitutionality
Section 1709(a)(2) presents a difficult constitutional problem for the government, as it authorizes placement on the Covered List absent any risk finding for the two companies identified by name. Whether the provision did the operative work here is contested. The calendar may be the best evidence that it did: the assessment issued two days before the statutory deadline, and the listing one day before. A determination produced under that pressure invites the inference that the default rather than a considered security judgment drove the outcome. DJI's bill-of-attainder and equal protection theories draw on a line of cases, including Kaspersky v. DHS and the TikTok litigation, that ask whether a burden placed on a named party furthers a nonpunitive purpose or simply punishes.[xxi] The government's difficulty is that the provision operates precisely when no agency has found a risk, which strains any argument that the burden rests on a security judgment rather than on the identity of its target.
The Future Value of Equipment Authorizations
For Autel, its set-aside application will determine whether a granted equipment authorization is durable or contingent. OET treated Section 2.962(f)’s “applicable requirements” as a continuing condition, so that a Covered List change arriving after grant rendered a compliant authorization defective. Autel reads the rule to fix compliance at the moment of grant, making the authorization a settled entitlement that reliance interests attach to. How the Commission answers will tell every authorization holder, foreign or domestic, how much a grant is actually worth, since any product category could in principle be added to the Covered List after approval.
Takeaways for Agricultural Operators
DJI equipment is woven through domestic UAS operations, and for many farmers its platforms are simply what the market defaulted to. The listing changes that landscape, with new models as the immediate casualty. Because the Covered List blocks fresh equipment authorizations, DJI’s 2026 releases cannot enter the US market, and the set-asides reach recently authorized products as well. Growers who replace or expand fleets will find the domestic and allied-manufactured alternatives generally costlier and, in the heavy-lift application segment, less mature.
The listing’s reach is ostensibly prospective, regulating authorization, importation, and sale. By its terms, it does not ground drones an operator already owns and flies. Importantly, though, the prohibition also extends to software updates for covered devices, so a UAS operator risks being stranded on a device’s last authorized version. The FCC has waived that result for equipment authorized before the listing at least through January 1, 2029, a runway it extended from 2027 in May 2026. What remains of support afterward is an open question.
The exemption pathway offers the commercial UAS sector little near-term relief. The January carve-out runs only through the end of 2026 and reaches no DJI product, and the conditional approvals granted so far have gone to manufacturers with domestic supply chains and onshoring commitments. For an operator weighing a purchase this season, the regulatory horizon is both short and unsettled.
None of the litigation tracks has produced a decision on the merits. The reconsideration record closed to replies in May, as did the record on Autel’s applications, and both now sit with the full Commission. Briefing in the Ninth Circuit will not begin until DJI’s opening brief comes due in November. That leaves the Section 1260H appeal, argued in February, as the only matter ripe for decision. Operators and manufacturers should expect the uncertainty to carry across the 2026 season and, in all likelihood, well beyond it.
[i]As used here, an “uncrewed aircraft system” (UAS) comprises the aircraft together with its control station and communications links, whereas an “uncrewed aerial vehicle” (UAV) is the aircraft alone. “Drone” is the colloquial, generic label for an uncrewed vehicle.
[ii] Grand View Research, U.S. Agriculture Drone Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Type (Fixed Wing, Rotary Wing), By Component, By Farming Environment, By Application, and Segment Forecasts 2025 - 2030.
[iii] Estimates of DJI’s overall domestic market share range from 75 to 80%, and a 2025 FAA-sponsored analysis of domestic UAS traffic detected DJI platforms in 96.4% of all samples recorded.
[iv]Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, Pub. L. No. 116-124, 134 Stat. 158 (codified at 47 U.S.C. §§ 1601–1609); see 47 U.S.C. § 1601(a).
[v]47 U.S.C. § 1601(b)(2); id. § 1608(4) (defining “communications equipment or service” as equipment or service essential to the provision of advanced communications service); id. § 1608(1) (defining “advanced communications service” by reference to 47 U.S.C. § 1302).
[vi]47 U.S.C. § 1601(b), (b)(1), (c).
[vii]47 U.S.C. § 1601(c)(1)–(4).
[viii] The Department of War is the redesignated primary name for the Department of Defense, which remains one of the five "appropriate national security agenc[ies]" enumerated in Section 9 of the Secure Networks Act.
[ix]47 U.S.C. § 1608(2).
[x]Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, Pub. L. No. 118-159, div. A, tit. XVII, § 1709(a)(1), (b)(1), 138 Stat. 1773, 2209 (codified as a note to 47 U.S.C. § 1601).
[xi]Pub. L. No. 118-159, § 1709(a)(2).
[xii]See Ralls Corp. v. Comm. on Foreign Inv. in the U.S., 758 F.3d 296 (D.C. Cir. 2014).
[xiii]Huawei Techs. USA, Inc. v. FCC, 2 F.4th 421, 459–60 (5th Cir. 2021) (denying Huawei’s petition for review of its designation as a national security threat under the Commission’s supply-chain rules, and rejecting its due process challenge where the Commission had afforded notice and an opportunity to be heard before the designation became final).
[xiv]See Foretich v. United States, 351 F.3d 1198 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (invalidating a statute as a bill of attainder); cf. Kaspersky Lab, Inc. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 909 F.3d 446 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (applying the same test but rejecting the challenge).
[xv]TikTok, Inc. v. Garland, 122 F.4th 930 (D.C. Cir. 2024).
[xvi]See Bowen v. Georgetown Univ. Hosp., 488 U.S. 204 (1988) (holding that an agency may not promulgate retroactive rules unless Congress has expressly conveyed that power).
[xvii]Respondents’ Motion to Dismiss (Mar. 6, 2026); Petitioners’ Opposition to Motion to Dismiss (Apr. 15, 2026); Order, SZ DJI Tech. Co. v. FCC, No. 26-1029 (9th Cir. May 28, 2026).
[xviii]Section 1260H of the 2021 NDAA, Pub. L. No. 116-283, 134 Stat. 3388, directs the Secretary of Defense (now War) to identify “Chinese military companies” operating directly or indirectly in the United States and to publish an annually updated list of them. Listing imposes no direct ban on commercial sales, but it forecloses Department of War contracting and procurement involving the listed entity and carries significant reputational consequences.
[xix]SZ DJI Tech. Co. v. U.S. Dep’t of Def., No. 1:24-cv-02970 (PLF) (D.D.C. Sept. 26, 2025) (granting summary judgment to the government and upholding the designation), appeal docketed, No. 25-5367 (D.C. Cir. Oct. 2025).
[xx]See Ralls, supra note 12.
[xxi]See supra notes 14–15.