A federal judge ordered the National Security Agency to immediately end its collection of call records associated with a California lawyer and his law firm Monday, about 20 days before the government’s broader dragnet surveillance program is scheduled to end.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon made clear his annoyance that it took 20 months from the time of his initial December 2013 decision that the program likely is unconstitutional for an appellate panel to rule on a preliminary injunction he had issued.

Standing by his original assessment of the program, Leon issued and refused to stay an injunction against collecting the call records of J.J. Little and his law firm, J.J. Little & Associates.

It's unclear if the Justice Department will hastily appeal. "The government is reviewing the decision," spokeswoman Nicole Navas says in an email.



The judge's decision was not a surprise, but it was welcomed nonetheless by activist attorney Larry Klayman, who filed the lawsuit shortly after exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden's June 2013 disclosures.

"We’re ecstatic," Klayman says. "This is a great victory for the American people, it’s a great victory for justice. This is one of the few judges in the country who has the guts to stand in the breach for the American people during a period of time where their government is running roughshod over them."

Happening now: Court rejects gov's pleas for delay, finding "even one day" without rights is "significant harm." pic.twitter.com/sHoTlHDuXk — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 9, 2015

Call records belonging to Klayman and his original co-plaintiffs – each Verizon Wireless customers – are not affected by the ruling. The appeals court panel found they lack sufficient proof their records are collected, as the government has only confirmed Verizon Business Network Services records are affected. That ruling prompted Little's addition as a plaintiff.

Much has changed since Leon's first ruling against the program in 2013, with Congress passing and President Barack Obama signing into law this year the USA Freedom Act, which as of Nov. 29 will end the dragnet collection of domestic call records.



Unlike a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which last month ruled the program can continue until the start of a new system that will acquire call records as needed and generally with a warrant, Leon found any delay impermissible.

“[T]he government is still, in effect, asking this court to sanction a dragnet of unparalleled proportions,” Leon wrote, finding limited changes imposed by the Obama administration unacceptably minor.

Leon also wrote that Congress didn’t actually bless the original phone program for the 180 days before the implementation of new legal restrictions.

“Not quite! Congress did not explicitly authorize a continuation of the program,” he wrote. “Rather, it artfully crafted a starting date for the prohibition of the program.”



The blessing of Congress would undermine claims the NSA lacks statutory authority for the phone record dragnet, which leaned on a secret and expansive reading of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Leon wrote that the constitutionality of the program, in any case, was more important than whether it’s authorized by Congress. “[T]he very purpose of the Fourth Amendment would be undermined were this court to defer to Congress’s determination that individual liberty should be sacrificed to better combat today’s evil,” he wrote.

Klayman and others challenging the bulk phone record program hope to update legal precedent from the 1979 Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Maryland, which found Americans lack an expectation of privacy over records voluntarily provided to a business. The so-called third party doctrine has potentially alarming applications as technologies proliferate, they say.

It's unclear what will become of the legal challenges when the phone record program ends. Legal experts say lawsuits that seek damages, such as Klayman's, stand a better chance of surviving government claims that they are moot after the collection ends.