In a surprising twist Wednesday that strikes one of the most colorful and curious measures from the November ballot, California’s Supreme Court unanimously blocked an initiative crafted by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist that calls for splitting the state into three.

The justices did not rule on an environmental group’s argument to stop the measure: that breaking up California would constitute a revision of the state’s constitution that is beyond voters’ power to approve through an initiative. And they left open the possibility that the measure known as Proposition 9 could end up on a future ballot if its backers persuade the court it is valid.

But they concluded that the “hardships from permitting an invalid measure to remain on the ballot outweigh the harm potentially posed by delaying a proposition to a future election.”

The court was acting on a petition from a Sacramento group, the Planning and Conservation League, which called the court’s decision a victory for Californians.

“It would have dismantled the world’s fifth biggest economy without solving a single challenge facing Californians today,” said Planning and Conservation League Executive Director Howard Penn in a Wednesday statement.

Billionaire Tim Draper, who created and bankrolled the “Cal 3” initiative said the court deprived Californians.

“The whole point of the initiative process was to be set up as a protection from a government that was no longer representing its people,” Draper said in an email. “Now that protection has been corrupted. Whether you agree or not with this initiative, this is not the way democracies are supposed to work.”

The decision marked Draper’s second defeat in his quest to divide California, after failing to get enough valid signatures to qualify a 2016 initiative calling for splitting California into six states.

Draper argues the state today is too big and its government to beholden to special interests to run effectively, saddling its residents with high taxes, home and energy costs and poor roads, schools and other public services.

His quest has delighted late-night comics like Stephen Colbert, who quipped a few years ago that it was about time California split up “because I was tired of waiting for the San Andreas fault to get around to it.”

But the state’s politicians weren’t amused. The initiative was opposed by California’s political establishment, including former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, as a distraction that will only worsen rather than solve the state’s problems.

“Putting this unpopular and flawed measure on the ballot in the first place was an act of political malpractice that gives direct democracy a bad name,” Núñez said in a Wednesday statement.

The conservation league saw the state-splitting initiative as a threat to regulations it fought to enact. The Sacramento-based group helped craft the California Environmental Quality Act, a centerpiece of the state’s environmental regulation that businesses often criticize as overly burdensome.

Draper had contributed more than $1.2 million toward the initiative’s passage. Núñez had contributed the opposition campaign’s only funding so far, $10,000.

Splitting up California would be a long-shot to say the least, even if voters approved. It also would require approval from Congress and face numerous legal challenges. Political experts have said that Congress would be unlikely to triple California’s representation in the U.S. Senate while diluting its Electoral College haul in presidential races.

California tried it a long time ago — in 1859. With approval from voters in southern California, the Legislature asked Congress to approve their separation from their northern neighbors. Congress declined to act.

The state’s legislative analyst predicted the initiative would “almost surely be challenged in the courts” even before going to a vote. California law allows constitutional amendments by ballot initiative, but not “revisions” that the state’s high court says would “substantially alter the basic governmental framework set forth in our constitution.”

“No initiative could properly attempt such complete dismantling of our constitutional structures,” the conservation league argued in its petition.

The secretary of state had certified Draper’s initiative for the November ballot on June 28, after concluding he had gathered more than 402,468 valid signatures. It needed 365,880 to qualify.

Draper said in his filed response last week that it would be inappropriate for the Supreme Court to rule on the initiative before voters have their say. He cited a 1982 ruling that suggested such a move would “disrupt the electoral process by preventing the exercise of the people’s franchise.”