California Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed a bill prohibiting the state from supplying “material support, participation, or assistance” in response to certain federal requests for metadata and electronic communications.

The so-called Fourth Amendment Protection Act, introduced with bipartisan sponsorship in January to combat National Security Agency surveillance programs, was heavily revised in the state legislature, limiting its punch.

The new law prohibits the state from helping federal authorities acquire “electronically stored information or metadata of any person if the state has actual knowledge that the request constitutes an illegal or unconstitutional collection.”

Brown, a Democrat, did not issue a signing statement and his office did not immediately provide comment. The final version of the bill passed both chambers of the legislature without opposition in August after an earlier version won near-unanimous approval in the state Senate in May.

State Sens. Joel Anderson, a Republican, and Ted Lieu, a Democrat, introduced the bill following exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelation of massive phone and Internet surveillance programs.

The bill as originally drafted sought to ban state assistance of any form to federal agencies that claim the power to collect electronic data or metadata without individualized warrants. That prohibition would have conceivably denied water and electricity to NSA facilities – though California is not currently believed to host any – and scuttled research partnerships between the NSA and state universities. The initial wording would also have denied state funds to companies working with the NSA.

“We’re trying to use the 10th Amendment to enforce the Fourth Amendment,” Anderson told U.S. News in May. “I can’t imagine they would want to locate here in California, we have not given them a warm welcome.”

The bill was modeled on draft legislation from the Tenth Amendment Center, a leading member of the OffNow coalition, which seeks to cut off public utilities to the NSA’s massive Utah Data Center and the agency’s Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters via state legislation. Such legislation did not pass this year in either state.

Though the California bill was significantly altered before becoming law, its sponsors hailed it as a step forward.

“I commend Gov. Brown for recognizing that the National Security Agency’s massive and indiscriminate collecting of phone and electronic data on all Americans, including more than 38 million Californians, is a threat to our liberty and freedom,” Lieu said in a statement. “We can only hope the feds halt this illegal and unconstitutional practice nationally.”

Anderson spokeswoman Carlisle Engelhardt says the law notably will restrict federal access to state-held voter and driver records.

Tenth Amendment Center spokesman Mike Maharrey says although the law is unlikely to significantly undermine NSA surveillance or the agency itself, it’s “something we can build on.”



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“The final version of the bill sets a pretty high threshold before it actually requires state action,” Maharrey says, “[but] I think we know where the opposition is coming from and we can overcome it [in the next legislative session].”