[staunch]

IANAL. There's absolutely nothing illegal about being a CA-based affiliate of Amazon. Amazon simply doesn't allow it anymore. If you're CA based and you trick Amazon into letting you be an affiliate that might cause problem between you and Amazon.

They might accuse you of fraud and/or of violating their Terms of Service or something. Most likely they'd kick you out of the program and possibly go after the money you earned.

You would not be in violation of any state of federal tax laws. The new laws only apply to stores themselves.

My guess is that it would be legal to setup an out of state LLC that was owned by your CA C-Corp/individual and let that company be the affiliate. Again, worst case is you violated your agreement with Amazon, not any tax laws.