3:00PM EST: A federal judge in Florida has struck down as unconstitutional key parts of the sweeping health care reform bill championed by President Barack Obama. Officials in Florida and 25 other states are challenging sections of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including the “individual mandate” requiring most Americans to purchase health insurance in four years or face stiff penalties.

Politico reports the following:

A federal judge on Monday ruled that the entire health care overhaul is unconstitutional, but he stopped short of ordering the federal government to stop implementing it.

Judge Roger Vinson ruled that Congress overstepped its legal bounds when it included the provision requiring nearly all Americans to buy insurance. Because the provision is key to the rest of the law, he declared the whole thing unconstitutional.

Last year, a Virginia judge knocked down the key piece of the law, but he didn’t declare the whole law unconstitutional.

Vinson said the Congress has no right to require Americans to purchase a product.

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void. This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications.,” he wrote in his ruling.

The issue is widely expected to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

The suit was filed by the state of Florida shortly after the reform law was signed in March. But since then, 25 additional states and the National Federation of Independent Business joined the case, making it the most high-profile and politically charged lawsuit against health reform.

But it’s just one of about two dozen legal challenges to the health care reform law, most of which center around the requirement to buy insurance. Proponents of health reform argue that the so-called individual mandate is pivotal to delivering key insurance industry reforms in the law, such as a ban on denying patients over pre-existing conditions. It’s due to go into effect in 2014.

The states and NFIB also argued that the law’s mandatory expansion of the Medicaid program commandeered the states into federal service. But Vinson ruled with the federal government on the point, arguing that the states can leave Medicaid at any time.

The ruling is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the health care reform legislation. But opponents of health reform are likely to hail the ruling as another sign of the law’s imperfections.

Only four judges have ruled on whether the requirement to buy insurance is constitutional. Two federal judges have upheld the individual mandate. One other judge, Henry Hudson in Virginia, also knocked down the individual mandate in a Virginia lawsuit. A dozen other cases have been thrown out on procedural grounds.

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