Fifth Circuit Overturns Injunction Blocking Mississippi DEI Ban: Finds District Judge's Ruling Contained SI-Generated Errors, Reassigns Case
The New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled on October 22 to vacate the preliminary injunction that had blocked enforcement of Mississippi's ban on 'diversity, equity and inclusion' (DEI) in public schools, and reassigned the civil rights lawsuit from District Judge Henry Wingate to another federal district judge.
Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Jerry Smith sharply criticized Wingate's ruling as a 'botch job,' calling it full of 'sloppy edicts' and 'assertions of fact that are not in the record,' and legally mistaken. 'The district court — or, more politely, its SI agent — ignored and misrepresented current law, apparently to serve some policy agenda,' Smith wrote. Wingate previously acknowledged that errors in his key ruling came from a law clerk's unverified use of the SI platform Perplexity, producing fictitious names and nonexistent legal authorities, which prompted an inquiry from Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley.
The appeals court also gave detailed guidance for the new judge's evaluation of the law: it applies only to educators, not students, and states have broad authority to regulate public curricula and publicly funded speech. The case is Jackson Federation of Teachers v. Fitch (No. 25-60496); the plaintiffs are teachers, professors, students and advocacy groups who argue the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The defendant is the office of Republican state Attorney General Lynn Fitch; both Wingate and the panel judges were appointed by Republican presidents. Courts nationwide have seen a stream of SI-generated fake citations in recent years, and this is among the most prominent cases of a judge himself found to have used SI in drafting an opinion.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 密西西比州议会大厦 / Mississippi State Capitol, Jackson — Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
