Tennessee may outlaw the Feds' collection of metadata

There are several problems with the approach by the Tennessee legislature. 

First is the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution where federal laws override state laws under the US Constitution.  The Supreme Court has repeatedly supported the Supremacy Clause even with it mandates actions by a State. If challenged by the federal government the law passed in Tennessee would unquestionably be struck down by the Supreme Court. There is a limited case where this law can be Constitutional and that is if it only addresses State Court issued search warrants. The State of Tennessee only has authority and jurisdiction over the State Courts and not the Federal Courts.

Even if by some wild and unusual case the US Supreme Court reversed precedent it has previously established and ruled that Tennesse could impose this requirement related to FISA issued search warrants, which is the authority for the NSA spying, it would only apply to enterprises headquartered in Tennessee. For example Verison is headquarted in New York and would still have to comply with the FISA search warrant and the data for Verison related to residents in Tennessee is not retained within Tennessee.

The better approach is already being taken by the ACLU which has filed a second lawsuit against the NSA spying. The original lawsuit from 2008 was dismissed by the US Supreme Court because the plaintiffs could not establishe that the NSA had actually been spying on them personally because the NSA refused to release that information. The Court ruled the plaintiff's didn't have "standing" because they couldn't establish that they were personally being spied upon. Today we know that the NSA is spying on every American so the plaintiff's in the current lawsuit do have standing. The advantage of the ACLU action is that it addresses the violations of the Constitution across the entire nation. If the Supreme Court rules on behalf of the plaintiffs it will prevent the spying against anyone in the United States. The Fourth Amendment is quite clear in it's wording and the ACLU has, what I consider, a slam-dunk case against the NSA.  

www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-files-lawsuit-challenging-constitutionality-nsa-phone-spying-program

What is somewhat ironic is that "social-conservatives" typically condemn the ACLU as being "liberal" and yet in this case it's the "liberal" ACLU that's really coming to the rescue related to our Constitutional Rights and not the so-called conservatives.