Yup, looks like this judge is an Obama appointee, former Blackmun clerk, former Clinton W.H. counsel. But sometimes even a partisan Democrat turned federal judge has to bow to reality.

The reality here is that R states have been subsidizing D states. Now the tax code has been reformed to make this more fair. As the WSJ said, the previous tax code “amounted to a subsidy for progressive policies.”

New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Connecticut are free to keep their confiscatory tax codes, as the opinion correctly notes:

…states remain free to exercise their tax power however they wish. To be sure, the SALT cap, like any other feature of federal law, makes certain state and local policies more attractive than others as a practical matter. But the bare fact that an otherwise valid federal law necessarily affects the decisional landscape within which states must choose how to exercise their own sovereign authority hardly renders the law an unconstitutional infringement of state power.

The only thing that’s changed is that the rest of country is no longer subsidizing the tax and spend coastal Ds. We feel their pain.