The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Thursday vacated a preliminary injunction and ordered a Mississippi federal case reassigned to a different judge, an extraordinary step taken after the panel found that orders from Judge Henry T. Wingate of the Southern District of Mississippi were riddled with fabrications. The case, Jackson Federation of Teachers v. Fitch, is a challenge to the state's anti-DEI education law. The appeals court's complaint was not with the politics. It was with the paperwork.
The Orders, Annotated
The temporary restraining order issued in July 2025 named 11 individuals and organizations that had never been parties to the case and listed defendants in roles in which they were not sued. It attributed to the statute four phrases, among them critical race theory and institutional bias, that appear nowhere in its text. It cited a Fourth Circuit decision, Cousins v. School Bd. of City of Norfolk, that does not exist. And it referred to declarations from four people who do not appear in the record at all and, in the panel's words, may not even exist. It is a remarkable amount of invention for a document whose job was to describe things that had happened.
A Lapse in Human Oversight
Wingate has said a law clerk used Perplexity strictly as a foundational drafting assistant, and that the draft skipped his chambers' standard review because of a lapse in human oversight. The standard review, one presumes, is the part of the process that was supposed to be the process. Even now, the explanation arrives with the particular serenity of an institution that discovered its safeguards were optional only when someone else read the output.
Being Charitable
Judge Jerry E. Smith, writing for the panel, said the district court, or perhaps, being charitable, its AI agent, ignored and manipulated governing law. He called the proceedings a botch job and the errors extraordinarily grave. The panel also noted that defendants had preserved the original order, which the district court had removed from public access, and called the court lucky that they had. The remedy was to vacate the injunction and send the case to a new judge. No sanctions were imposed.
And yet, as if this were not enough, the profession's answer to an unreviewed machine draft turns out to be a fresh judge and a stern adjective. One presumes the Legal Community is re-reading its own footnotes this evening, dear reader, with the quiet intensity of people who have just learned that the citation checker is also a person.
Sources: ComplexDiscovery — 5th Circuit reassigns Mississippi DEI case after judge's orders cite fabricated parties, quotations and a nonexistent case · National Law Journal — 'A Botch Job': 5th Circuit Reassigns Case After Judge Misused AI to Draft Ruling
