Michael Jones and his single-member company, 360 Virtual Drone Services LLC, are asking the US supreme court to resolve a major legal dispute regarding the First Amendment. The petition asks the court to clarify whether occupational licensing laws regulate professional conduct or unconstitutionally restrict free speech.

Jones is a drone enthusiast who started a small business taking aerial photographs of properties and construction sites. He uses software to stitch these images together, creating two-dimensional orthomosaic maps and 3D digital models for his clients. Because these composite images contain geographic coordinates and metadata that allow users to calculate distances or elevations, the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors told him he was practising land surveying without a licence. To obtain this licence, Jones would need to complete a nine-year apprenticeship under a practising licensed surveyor, which is prohibitive for his small business. Faced with the threat of criminal prosecution, he stopped offering his aerial mapping services.

Jones argues that the North Carolina surveying law violates his right to free speech because the law is triggered entirely by the communicative content and data in his photographs. For instance, providing a regular photograph is legal, but adding a scale bar to the corner of the image converts it into an illegal, unlicensed land survey in the eyes of the board.

The US court of appeals for the fourth circuit ruled against Jones, deciding that the state law regulates professional conduct and only incidentally burdens his speech. To reach this conclusion, the fourth circuit created a new legal test based on a non-exhaustive list of factors, such as whether the speech takes place in a private sphere or carries economic consequences.

The petition highlights a deep division among the lower courts regarding how to judge these cases. While the fourth circuit uses its new multi-factor test, the fifth circuit rigorously applies a traditional standard that clearly separates speech from conduct. Meanwhile, the eleventh circuit uses yet another rule that the fifth circuit has explicitly rejected. Jones is urging the supreme court to intervene, resolve this widespread confusion, and establish a uniform rule that the creation and dissemination of information is protected speech rather than strictly professional conduct