AI-related errors in Mississippi TRO draw appeals court scrutiny

The plaintiffs sued Mississippi in June 2025 to block H.B. 1193, an anti-DEI law that had just taken effect.[1] Wingate granted their request for a TRO on July 20.[1] In a motion filed two days later, the state said the order referred to parties who were not in the case and allegations absent from both the complaint and the record.[1] The state also said the TRO cited declarations from four people whose declarations were not in the record and quoted terms that did not appear in the law.[1] Reuters reported that Wingate identified the platform used by the clerk as Perplexity and called the filing a lapse in human oversight.[2]

Wingate removed the original TRO from the docket and replaced it with a corrected order signed July 22 but backdated to July 20, according to state attorneys.[1] Wingate described the filed order as an early draft that had not gone through the standard review process.[1] The platform was described as a foundational drafting assistant for synthesizing publicly available information on the docket.[1] The state’s attorney general later asked a federal appeals court to overturn Wingate’s preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Mississippi’s DEI restrictions and to reassign the judge.[2] At the appeal hearing, the panel asked lawyers to be prepared to address reassignment if the case returned to district court.[2]

The appeals panel appeared poised to call for a different judge, and it questioned whether AI use might have affected the lower court’s legal reasoning.[2] Reuters reported that the court’s AI-related errors raised significant concerns about its deliberative process.[2] Shults told the appeals court that the amended order contained another AI-related citation error.[2] Plaintiffs’ lawyer Robert McDuff argued that AI did not tell Wingate to grant the TRO and opposed reassignment.[2] Wingate’s corrective measures require a second independent review of draft opinions, orders and memos, and require cited cases to be printed and attached to final drafts.[3] Reuters reported that U.S. courts had no uniform rules for judges’ and lawyers’ AI use, while attorneys must verify filings.[2]