5TH CIR.Court order
Fifth Circuit vacates Mississippi anti-DEI injunction and reassigns case after AI-tainted rulings
A Fifth Circuit panel on October 22, 2026, vacated U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate's preliminary injunction against Mississippi's ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools and universities, and ordered the case reassigned on remand. Writing for the panel, Judge Jerry Smith cited AI hallucinations in Wingate's temporary restraining order and said the court misapplied the Supreme Court's facial-challenge standard.
Order (Law.com) → · Bloomberg Law, Courthouse News Service
Key points
- The TRO named nonparties, quoted terms absent from the statute and cited evidence not in the record.Courthouse News Service
- Wingate said a law clerk used the AI tool Perplexity on a draft that was mistakenly docketed.Bloomberg LawCourthouse News Service
- The corrected TRO still cited a nonexistent case, which the panel said tainted the injunction it was incorporated into.Courthouse News Service
- The panel said Wingate failed to apply the Moody v. NetChoice test for facial First Amendment challenges.Courthouse News Service
- Judge Catharina Haynes agreed with the holding but did not join most of the opinion.Courthouse News Service
Sources3 articles across 3 outlets
Filed under
Court orderU.S.Miss.5th Cir.S.D. Miss.Civil rightsEducationTechnologyFor practitionersFor governance