The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on 22 October vacated a preliminary injunction against Mississippi’s anti-DEI law and ordered the case moved away from District Judge Henry Wingate, JURIST reported.
A temporary order Wingate issued in July 2025 named plaintiffs who did not exist and quoted the statute incorrectly. He later said a law clerk had used generative AI to draft it, and a replacement order still cited a case that does not exist.
The panel said it reassigned the case to protect public confidence in the courts. Its criticism also covered the quality of the legal analysis, not only the AI errors.
Why it matters: it is a rare case of an appeals court taking a case from a judge after AI mistakes in his own court’s work.
Source: JURIST. Also reported by National Law Review.