There is a small group of legislators in Washington working to protect the private communications and data of Americans with a new bill that would prevent individual states from passing laws that weaken encryption.

The bill is known as the ENCRYPT (Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications) Act and it’s the work of several lawmakers, including Reps. Ted Lieu, Mike Bishop, Susan DelBene, and Jim Jordan. The group introduced the bill last week and it’s a direct response to efforts in some states to pass measures that would require device manufacturers to include mechanisms that enable decryption of users’ data. Lawmakers in both New York and California have introduced such bills in recent years, and while they haven’t succeeded, the sponsors of the ENCRYPT Act want to ensure that other state legislatures don’t go down the same path.

The language in the new House of Representatives bill clearly prohibits states from passing laws that weaken or ban encryption. Here’s the relevant text:

“In General.—A State or political subdivision of a State may not—mandate or request that a manufacturer, developer, seller, or provider of covered products or services—
(A) design or alter the security functions in its product or service to allow the surveillance of any user of such product or service, or to allow the physical search of such product, by any agency or instrumentality of a State, a political subdivision of a State, or the United States; or
(B) have the ability to decrypt or otherwise render intelligible information that is encrypted or otherwise rendered unintelligible using its product or service; or
(2) prohibit the manufacture, sale or lease, offering for sale or lease, or provision to the general public of a covered product or service because such product or service uses encryption or a similar security function.”