President Barack Obama is preparing to call for dramatic reductions in the government’s power to collect and store American phone records, but that victory for privacy advocates may also spare the program from a judicial reckoning.

Obama is expected to announce the precise details of his proposal soon and recommend that Congress pass a bill enacting them. The proposal would end the NSA’s in-house retention of all American phone records, the White House said Thursday in a statement, and except in emergencies would require individual Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approvals before records are taken from phone companies.

The package will also, according to The New York Times, “include a provision clarifying whether Section 215 of the Patriot Act … may in the future be legitimately interpreted as allowing bulk data collection of telephone data.”

Section 215 was secretly interpreted by FISC judges to authorize the bulk phone-record collection for seven years before the program was exposed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden in June.

It’s unclear what clarification of Section 215 will be included in Obama’s proposal, or ultimately passed by Congress. Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council, declined to clarify pending the release of the proposal.

But a bill introduced Tuesday by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland and Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, and co-sponsored by other previous supporters of the surveillance program, would explicitly say the bulk collection of phone metadata is not allowed by altering language added to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by Section 215. So too would the bill embraced by the most vocal anti-surveillance lawmakers, the USA Freedom Act, which is sponsored by Patriot Act author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

It’s unclear who in Congress would sponsor legislation reflecting Obama’s wishes, or if he merely intends to embrace an existing bill that is similar to his proposal. Ruppersberger said in a Thursday appearance on MSNBC's “Andrea Mitchell Reports” his bill is “very, very close” to the White House proposal – with the key difference being Obama’s preference for court approval before the records are taken.

If Obama and Congress do agree to permanently proscribe mass phone record collection, that may kill lawsuits seeking a finding that the program is unconstitutional and updated Supreme Court guidance on government surveillance, three legal experts on mootness say.

“The court can only enjoin programs that will continue into the future, not programs that existed in the past,” says Douglas Laycock, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School.

There are six major lawsuits challenging the program. Each of the lawsuits seek declarations that the program is unconstitutional and permanent injunctions ending it.

Conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, unlike other challengers, seeks damages from Verizon and U.S. officials – which may keep his two cases alive, experts say. Cases brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., do not seek damages.

“If the change comes in the form of a formal statute, rather than simply an executive branch discretionary decision, and there is no issue of past damages … I would put my money on the judiciary's finding the issue moot,” says Martin Redish, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law.

Phone companies complying with government surveillance were granted immunity by Congress in 2007, but the government may be on the hook for damages if it's found to have violated Section 2712 of the Stored Communications Act.

“If Congress passes a statute saying that bulk data collection is not authorized, it is not authorized beginning with the date of the new statute's enactment. And if what the plaintiffs want is an injunction against future collection of bulk data, then any dispute about whether bulk data collection would be lawful in the absence of the new statute would be moot,” says Harvard Law School professor Richard Fallon.

“By contrast, if someone brought a damages action seeking to recover for harm caused by data collection that had occurred in the past, and was alleged to be unlawful at the time when it happened in the past, then a statute retroactively ‘clarifying’ what Section 215 meant in the past would be evidence, but not necessarily controlling evidence, with regard to what Section 215 meant in the past,” Fallon says.

There may be complicated technical issues for judges to consider, Fallon cautions.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary injunction – which he stayed pending appeal – against the phone program Dec. 16, agreeing with Klayman that the program almost certainly violates the Fourth Amendment. Leon described existing legal precedent cited by Department of Justice attorneys as outdated in his ruling.

“I cannot possibly navigate these uncharted Fourth Amendment waters using as my North Star a case that predates the rise of cellphones,” Leon wrote, referring to the Supreme Court's 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, which government attorneys defending the NSA program point to as legal precedent allowing dragnet surveillance. The ruling is interpreted to mean Americans have no right to privacy over their phone metadata records.

Attorneys challenging the NSA program hoped for a landmark Supreme Court decision mirroring the 2012 decision in U.S. v. Jones, which imposed limitations on GPS tracking. Such a decision might have broader ramifications.

One unresolved issue if reforms are enacted is a preservation of evidence order from U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White that requires the NSA to not destroy the phone records it currently retains – including those older than the current five-year standard for retention. The older records must be sequestered from routine searches.

“These records are both an affront to the rights of millions of Americans and proof of their violation,” EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl told U.S. News before White’s ruling last week. “[T]he destruction of these documents is part of the ultimate relief the Plaintiffs seek. But they also seek an accounting – so that people may know how their rights were violated.”

That sentiment may foreshadow arguments about mootness.

Neither the forthcoming Obama administration proposal nor the Ruppersberger-Rogers bill would require phone companies to store records for longer periods of time than they currently do – between 18 months and 10 years, depending on the provider – allaying the fears of privacy advocates. Supporter of the bulk data collection previously said the program was needed to prevent acts of terrorism, but critics say the administration has offered no proof the near-decade-old program prevented any planned terror attack within the U.S.