Appeals court tosses Mississippi DEI ruling marred by AI hallucinations
A federal appeals court overturned an order blocking Mississippi’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public schools and universities after a district judge acknowledged his staff used artificial intelligence to help draft a ruling found to be riddled with errors.
In an opinion released Thursday, U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith called Judge Henry Wingate’s ruling a “botch job” after Wingate said a law clerk used AI to write a draft of the order that was mistakenly docketed.
Wingate’s order concerned a Mississippi law that banned any public funds from going to DEI programs and diversity trainings. Wingate sided with the plaintiffs — a group of teachers, students and parents who argued the law violated the First Amendment — and issued a temporary restraining order blocking its enforcement.
The TRO, however, contained “several factual assertions nowhere to be found in the record, or indeed, in any proceeding of the case,” Smith wrote in his opinion.
He continued: “Those included mention of plaintiffs and defendants not in the complaint, supposed ‘declarations’ from non-existent or never-present individuals, false quotations purporting to be taken from the text of H.B. 1193, and several erroneous claims that the law had already led to the demise of apparently fictitious programs.”
Smith, part of a three-judge panel, vacated the TRO, which will temporarily allow the law to be enforced as written. He ordered the case be taken out of Wingate’s jurisdiction and reassigned to a new district judge.