As Australia wages its campaign that forces tobacco manufacturers to adopt plain packaging on their products, a U.S. District Court ruled against a similar measure in the United States on Wednesday.

According to Reuters, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon deemed the government regulation that requires cigarette products to be marketed with grim and imposing health warnings as unconstitutional.

Leon said in his ruling that for tobacco packaging to include graphic images that highlighted the health problems associated with cigarette smoking is tantamount to stifling free-speech rights.

The new regulation, which is being implemented under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), imposes on tobacco firms to print disturbing images, like that of a cancer-ravaged lung or a decaying set of teeth, that would educate the public on the health hazards of smoking.

But tobacco companies launched legal challenges, with their main argument centred on the proposition that the government regulation would compel them to be actively involved on anti-smoking drive that would obviously imperil their own products.

The FDA regulation is based on a U.S. law passed by the U.S. Congress in 2009 that requires tobacco companies to devote 50 percent of their cigarette packaging to graphic health warnings and another 20 percent for print advertisements of their products.

Leon, however, ruled that U.S. lawmakers may have overlooked the basic provisions of the U.S. Constitution when they drafted and approved the anti-smoking legislation.

"Unfortunately, because Congress did not consider the First Amendment implications of this legislation, it did not concern itself with how the regulations could be narrowly tailored to avoid unintentionally compelling commercial speech," Leon was quoted by Reuters as saying in his decision.

"The government has failed to carry both its burden of demonstrating a compelling interest and its burden of demonstrating that the rule is narrowly tailored to achieve a constitutionally permissible form of compelled commercial speech," the American judge added.

The court also suggested that the U.S. government may be served much better if its anti-smoking stance would be expressed in manners within its jurisdiction and would veer away from violating the rights of others as guarantee in the U.S. Constitution.

The government could consider including health facts about the ill effects of smoking on every cigarette package or further increase taxes imposed on tobacco products to discourage the public from smoking, Leon said.

Leon's decision followed his earlier ruling last year that granted an injunction against the new government regulation.

One of the tobacco companies that fought the new packaging measures was Britain's Imperial Tobacco Group, also a key litigant in the ongoing legal battle in Australia that should be ruled in favour of the federal government would leave cigarette products in plain packages.

The proposal would strip tobacco companies of their commercial and intellectual rights, tobacco companies said on their legal challenges, which also questioned the constitutionality of the government initiative.