A Florida judge called the wording of a Republican-backed constitutional amendment fighting the individual mandate in federal health reform “manifestly misleading” and removed it from the state’s November ballot.

Leon County Circuit Court James Shelfer took issue with the way the state’s Republicans wrote the amendment, which seeks to prohibit the state from taking part in any health insurance exchange that mandates people buy coverage, according to the Miami Herald.

The ruling is the first involving Republicans’ state-by-state efforts to fight the individual mandate on constitutional grounds. At least 38 states have worked to kill the individual mandate through legislation, while a handful of court battles over the federal reform law’s legality remain on judges’ agendas.

Shelfer’s ruling is expected to be appealed.

Shelfer’s ruling hinged on the state law’s requirement that ballot summaries e clear and accurate. The proposed ballot summary for the amendment contains several phrases that are “political” and focuses attention on issues not included in the proposal, according to the report.

The judge ruled that the amendment does not guarantee, as noted in the first sentence of the amendment’s summary, that it would “ensure access to health care services without waiting lists, protect the doctor-patient relationship, (and) guard against mandates that don’t work.”

The Herald quoted Shelfer as saying, “`Someone voting on the amendment, reading those introductory statements would have a false understanding of what they were voting on.”