Appeals court throws out a Mississippi injunction drafted with AI errors and takes the DEI case away from Judge Henry Wingate

On 22 October a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated District Judge Henry Wingate's injunction against Mississippi's ban on spending public education money on diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, and ordered the case reassigned to another judge, AP and Bloomberg Law reported.

AP reported that the court described Wingate's temporary restraining order as a “botch job” that contained “artificial intelligence hallucinations”. Fox News quotes the court as saying that the district court, “or perhaps, being charitable, its AI agent”, “ignored and manipulated governing law, apparently to satisfy a policy agenda.” The Epoch Times, republished by the Baltimore Sun, carries the same words. Bloomberg Law reported that Wingate had acknowledged that one of his opinions contained AI-generated errors, and had said last year that his law clerk used the AI tool Perplexity to help draft an order in the case.

Portions of the Mississippi ban can now go into effect, AP reported, and the case continues before a new judge. We did not open the opinion itself, so the case name, docket number and authoring judge are not given here.

• Reported The Fifth Circuit vacated Judge Wingate's injunction and ordered the case reassigned, AP reported. AP, via ABC News
• Reported The court called the restraining order a “botch job” with “artificial intelligence hallucinations”, AP reported. AP, via ABC News
• Reported Wingate had said his law clerk used Perplexity to help draft an order in the case, Bloomberg Law reported. Bloomberg Law