Appeals Court Pulls Judge Off Mississippi Anti-DEI Case, Calling His Orders a 'Botch Job' With an Apparent AI-Invented Citation

A federal appeals court has taken a judge off a challenge to Mississippi's anti-DEI law and said his handling of the case was a "botch job."

The ruling. In an opinion by Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, the Fifth Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction that Judge Henry Wingate, also a Reagan appointee, had issued against the law. It also ordered the case reassigned to a different judge in the Southern District of Mississippi. Fox describes that step as "extraordinary" and "rarely invoked."

What the court found. Smith wrote that the district judge "carelessly exercised his Article III power by issuing sloppy edicts based on falsehoods and fabrications." He added that "the district court, or perhaps, being charitable, its AI agent, ignored and manipulated governing law, apparently to satisfy a policy agenda."

The errors. Teachers, parents and students sued, arguing that the state law restricting DEI-related practices in public schools and universities violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Wingate issued a temporary restraining order in July, then replaced it two days later after Mississippi officials flagged mistakes. Fox lists them: 11 people and groups named as plaintiffs who were never in the case, two officials wrongly named as defendants, and unsupported claims that three schools had already dropped DEI programs because of the law. The appeals court said the first order also cited declarations from four people who did not appear in the record and "may not even exist," and attributed language to the bill that is not in the law.

The citation. Even the corrected order cited a case that does not exist, which the Fifth Circuit called "an apparent AI hallucination." Wingate later acknowledged that a law clerk used artificial intelligence to help draft the order. He said the errors were "clerical" and did not affect the court's "core legal reasoning." The appeals court pushed back, asking "how so many mistaken facts could not at least marginally 'affect' 'core legal reasoning.'"

The law. The panel said Wingate misread Supreme Court precedent, including the 2024 Moody v. NetChoice test for striking down a whole law on First Amendment grounds, and the 2025 Trump v. CASA decision on the scope of injunctions. Smith wrote that Wingate's quoted reading of CASA is "almost exactly the opposite of what CASA says." He also criticized the reasoning that a court "should pause" when the law is unsettled, saying that "gets the entire law of injunctive relief completely backwards."

What happens next. A new judge will take up the case. The ruling vacates the injunction but does not decide whether the Mississippi law is constitutional.

Note for readers: Fox did not include a response from the plaintiffs' lawyers in the text we reviewed. We have not read the Fifth Circuit's opinion ourselves.