Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., should be glad state legislatures no longer elect U.S. senators.

On Monday the California State Senate voted 29-1 to approve SB 828, the so-called California Fourth Amendment Protection Act, which would pull the plug on state cooperation with the National Security Agency.

Though the NSA isn’t named, bill sponsors, Sens. Ted Lieu, a Democrat, and Joel Anderson, a Republican, are specifically targeting the spy agency.

The bill would ban the state from providing “material support, participation or assistance” to any federal agency “attempting the illegal and unconstitutional collection of electronic data or metadata, without consent, of any person not based on a valid warrant that particularly describes the person, place, and thing to be searched or seized or a court order, or in accordance with judicially recognized exceptions to warrant requirements.”

The NSA does not currently operate known facilities in the state, but Anderson tells U.S. News the legislation would shut down existing research partnerships between the agency and public universities.

“I can’t imagine they would want to locate here in California, we have not given them a warm welcome … [and] we’re trying to draw a bright blue line for all state employees,” he says. “We’re trying to use the 10th Amendment to enforce the Fourth Amendment."

The Republican sponsor says most Californians easily grasp the issue and share his outrage.

“What no country has been able to take from us through force the NSA is taking in the dark of night," he says.

Anderson notes the bill isn’t limited to the NSA, and sees the current debate in historical terms.

“This goes back to the Nixon years, he was labeling American citizens subversive and he had secret files on Americans. … It was outrageous when Nixon did it and it’s outrageous when Obama does it,” he says.

So far, one federal judge has found the agency’s dragnet collection of U.S. phone records likely unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington, D.C., ruled Dec. 16 the “almost Orwellian” collection almost certainly violates Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley of New York reached the opposite conclusion Dec. 27. Other federal judges are currently reviewing the program.

Mike Maharrey, communications director of the Tenth Amendment Center, says California’s attorney general would likely have to deem the NSA a rights violator before the ban on cooperation would take effect.

The California bill was modeled on sample legislation from the Tenth Amendment Center. Similar bills were proposed in state legislatures across the country, but Maharrey says California always looked promising because of its bipartisan backing.

Editorial Cartoons on the NSA View All 107 Images

“If California passes the bill that’s going to add a whole 'nother level of momentum because state legislatures are copycats,” he says. “I really think it’s going to ramp up [next year].”

A bill remains active this legislative session in Michigan and a bill in Utah – home of the NSA’s massive Utah Data Center – is being carried over to next year. A bill introduced by Maryland Republicans that would cut off the NSA’s Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters died in committee.

“The sponsors I’ve talked to, every one of them has indicated they plan to sponsor the same bill or a similar bill in the next legislative session,” Maharrey says.

The California bill’s original wording would have banned companies with state contracts from working with the NSA and California’s political subdivisions from providing material support, and would have explicitly banned NSA-derived evidence from state courts.

Those provisions were stripped, but Anderson says NSA evidence collected without warrants will still be deemed invalid. The free market can punish companies that collaborate with the NSA on warrantless surveillance, he says.

It’s unclear if local governments would be bound by the “material support” ban.

“It’s a much simpler bill, but it’s still solid and packs a punch,” Maharrey says. “A good bill passing can create a lot of momentum.”

Feinstein, the chairwoman of the U.S. Senate’s intelligence committee, loudly defended the NSA's phone and Internet surveillance programs following exile whistleblower Edward Snowden’s bombshell June 2013 disclosures. Her office did not immediately return a request for comment about the state legislation.