A ruling from a federal judge in Mississippi contained factual errors — listing plaintiffs who weren’t parties to the suit, including incorrect quotes from a state law and referring to cases that don’t appear to exist — raising questions about whether artificial intelligence was involved in drafting the order.
U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate issued an error-laden temporary restraining order on July 20, pausing the enforcement of a state law that prohibits diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools and universities.
Lawyers from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office asked him to clarify the order on Tuesday, and attorneys for the plaintiffs did not oppose the state’s request. On Wednesday, Wingate replaced the order with a corrected version.
His original order no longer appears on the court docket, so the public no longer has access to it. The corrected order is backdated to July 20, even though it was filed three days later.
“Our attorneys have never seen anything like this,” a Mississippi Attorney General’s Office official told Mississippi Today, speaking only on background because the litigation is pending.
Some attorneys who have reviewed the ruling questioned whether artificial intelligence was used to craft the order. Wingate did not respond to repeated questions about the order or whether he or his staff used AI to prepare it.
The original order lists plaintiffs such as the Mississippi Library Association and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., who have never been involved in the pending litigation and who do not even have cases pending before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
Wingate’s original order also appears to quote portions of the initial lawsuit and the legislation that established Mississippi’s DEI prohibition, making it seem as though the phrases were taken verbatim from the texts. But the quoted phrases don’t appear in either the complaint or the legislation.
Wingate’s corrected order still cites a 1974 case from the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, Cousins v. School Board of City of Norfolk. However, when Mississippi Today attempted to search for that case, it appears that either it does not exist or the citation is incorrect.
Christina Frohock, a University of Miami law school professor who studies the dangers artificial intelligence poses to the integrity of the legal system, said a common way attorneys are getting caught using AI is due to “hallucinations,” or instances where AI programs cite cases that don’t exist or use fabricated quotes.
Frohock was hesitant to draw conclusions about the errors in the Mississippi ruling and attribute them to AI, but she was similarly perplexed by how basic facts from the case record were incorrect.
“I actually don’t know how to explain the backstory here,” she said. “I feel like I’m Alice in Wonderland.”
Attorneys have an ethical obligation to make truthful representations in court, so when they are caught using artificial intelligence, judges have applied sanctions and demanded explanations. Just this month, a federal judge in Colorado ordered two attorneys to pay thousands in fines after they used AI to write a mistake-riddled court filing.
But there’s little recourse when the tables are turned.
“If an attorney does this, a judge can demand explanations, but it’s not true in the other direction,” Frohock said. “We will probably never know what happened, unless an appellate court demands it.”
Parties in the case will meet again Aug. 5 to argue about a preliminary injunction in the case.
Wingate, 78, was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate that same year. He served as chief judge of the Southern District from 2003 to 2010.
