Distributing secret recordings of health-care workers, like the covert, heavily edited footage attacking Planned Parenthood, could come with a penalty of up to one year of jail time and fines of up to $10,000, under legislation that cleared the California State Assembly on Tuesday.

Introduced by Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), AB 1671 makes it a crime to disclose or distribute an illegally obtained confidential communication with a health-care provider.

The measure heads to the state senate, after passing out of the Assembly in a 52-26 vote. Democrats hold the majority in both chambers.

State law bars confidential recordings of communications without the consent of all parties, but doesn’t address distribution. Failing to criminalize distribution left Planned Parenthood open to attack by the anti-choice front group known as the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), according to Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, which sponsored the legislation.

“This bill grew out of our unfortunate experience last summer when the Center for Medical Progress published on the internet a series of video recordings it had made surreptitiously at confidential conferences or in private conversations with medical providers,” Planned Parenthood argued in an analysis supporting the bill. “Because California’s invasion of privacy law only prohibits the taping, but not the distribution or disclosure, CMP was able to publish manipulated snippets of the tapes on the internet and widely disseminate them to legislatures and the press.”

The discredited CMP footage ignited an anti-choice firestorm, with Republican lawmakers in Congress and in state legislatures launching investigations of the health-care provider, and pushing to defund Planned Parenthood. Twelve states have so far found no evidence of wrongdoing.

David Daleiden, the head of CMP, and Sandra Merritt, who was involved in the video sting operation, were both indicted in January on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record.