TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) – The home state of the Rev. Fred Phelps and his followers, who protest military funerals throughout the nation, finally may have a law regulating how close they can be to services with their placards and picketing.

A picketing bill went to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius on Thursday, after the Senate voted 40-0 to approve a rewritten version first passed by the House. The governor is expected to sign it.

It has the legal novelty of not taking effect until the Kansas Supreme Court or a federal court rules that it’s constitutional. Legislators added the provision to lessen concerns that Phelps and his followers would file a legal challenge, win and collect attorney fees from the state.

“Kansas families will finally have some modicum of privacy as they bury their dead,” said Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, who came up with the court test idea.

But Shirley Phelps-Roper, a daughter of the pastor and spokesperson for his Westboro Baptist Church, predicted the law would have no practical effect on its activities.

“It isn’t going to let you do anything to us,” she said.

Under the bill, protesters can’t be within 150 feet of a funeral one hour before, during or two hours after the end of the service. Violators would face up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. Last year, the House and Senate deadlocked over a final version and nothing passed.

It makes it unlawful to obstruct any public street or sidewalk and allows family members to sue if they feel protesters defamed the deceased – an exception to the general rule of law that one cannot libel or slander the dead.

Once the bill is signed into law, Attorney General Paul Morrison is required to take the necessary steps to get a court ruling on the bill’s constitutionality.

“The attorney general will use every resource constitutionally available to him to protect Kansas families from disrespectful intrusions during their time of grief and mourning,” said spokesperson Ashley Anstaett.

Even if the bill becomes law, it won’t deter members of Westboro Baptist, a small fundamentalist congregation in Topeka, whose members picket burials of U.S. troops killed in combat. They say those deaths are God’s punishment for a nation harboring homosexuals and their protests are a form of religious expression protected by the Constitution.

“They have made a buffer zone, but the buffer zone is smaller than where we stand,” Phelps-Roper said. “As long as we’re not standing in the buffer zone, they can’t lower the boom on us.”

She said the group has protested about 250 funerals in the past 21 months in 41 states and focuses its protests in high visibility areas, often more than 150 feet away from the funeral site.

Phelps and his followers have conducted anti-gay protests since 1991 but gained national attention when they started showing up at funerals for troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those actions generated outrage throughout the nation. At least 32 states have enacted laws restricting funeral protests, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Last week, a federal judge upheld significant portions of Ohio’s 2006 law limiting when and where people can protest at funerals. That state’s law prohibits protesters from being within 300 feet of a funeral either one hour before or after.