This judge has managed to interpret a law in a way that clearly was not intended, by insisting on the so-called "Literal Rule" of statute interpretation. I don't know what the situation is in the USA, but in Commonwealth countries the Literal Rule is generally deprecated, and the alternatives:
* Golden Rule
* Mischief Rule
* Purposive method
* Contextual method
are preferred. (Actually, the Purposive method is also nowdays discouraged since it is seen as weakening the separation of powers). In this case, any one of these interpretative methods would have allowed the judge to avoid the obvious absurdity of his interpretation.

IANAL but it seems to me that this judge erred in law.

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