Federal judge removed from case for using AI-hallucinations as legal authority in controversial ruling

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction aimed at blocking Mississippi’s anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) education law and ordered US District Judge Henry Wingate removed from the case, reported JURISTnews.

Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel in Jackson Federation of Teachers v. Fitch, Circuit Judge Jerry Smith condemned the lower court’s handling of the constitutional challenge to Mississippi House Bill 1193. Judge Wingate initially issued a July 2025 temporary restraining order (TRO) that named 11 non-existent plaintiffs, cited declarations from four individuals absent from the record, and fabricated quotes from the state statute. When state officials flagged the errors, Wingate replaced the order with a backdated version and dismissed the mistakes as clerical.

Following an oversight inquiry by Senator Chuck Grassley, Wingate admitted in October 2025 that a law clerk had used generative artificial intelligence (AI) to draft the initial order. During appellate oral arguments, the panel discovered that the replacement TRO, which Wingate incorporated by reference into his August 2025 statewide preliminary injunction, still contained an AI-hallucinated citation to a non-existent 1974 Fourth Circuit case, Cousins v. School Bd. of City of Norfolk.

Rebuking the lower court’s reliance on fabricated facts and flawed legal reasoning, Judge Smith wrote:

The proceedings in the district court were a botch job, to say the least. … This district judge carelessly exercised his Article III power by issuing sloppy edicts based on falsehoods and fabrications. Upon discovering some of these falsehoods, Judge Wingate dug in his heels and claimed that the hallucinated claims had no bearing on its reasoning; he offered no explanation as to why he included such apparently irrelevant material in the original TRO or why the TRO nevertheless was justified in its absence. Moreover, the district court got the law wrong. The TRO and preliminary injunction order rested on impoverished legal analysis that barely paid lip-service to the precedents of the Supreme Court or this court, seeming at times purposely to misconstrue the law by manipulating the words of statutes and cases, without regard to their texts’ meaning as a whole. The district court—or perhaps, being charitable, its AI agent—ignored and manipulated governing law, apparently to satisfy a policy agenda.

Enacted in April 2025, House Bill 1193 bars Mississippi public schools and universities from maintaining DEI offices, mandating diversity statements, or endorsing specific DEI concepts in course materials. While courts worldwide have increasingly confronted legal officials misusing AI in court filings, the Fifth Circuit concluded that Wingate’s errors required reassigning the case to a new judge on remand to preserve public confidence in the judiciary.

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