The Board of Immigration Appeals has designated Matter of Sethi as precedent, holding that an attorney suspended by the Ninth Circuit over a brief containing AI hallucinations and false statements about his AI use is properly subject to reciprocal discipline before the Board, the Immigration Courts and DHS

What did the Board publish on October 1, 2026?

The October 1 event is a precedent designation. The decision is dated "Decided October 1, 2026", and footnote 1 explains the date: "The Board has designated as precedent this decision, which was previously issued unpublished on September 15, 2026." The same footnote says editorial changes were made consistent with the designation.

The suspension it imposes is older still. The Board suspended the respondent from practice before the Board of Immigration Appeals, the Immigration Courts and DHS for 6 months, effective June 13, 2026, which is the date the Ninth Circuit's own suspension took effect. Read on October 1, the order describes a period that began in June. It does not start a fresh six months.

The procedural history in the decision runs as follows. The Ninth Circuit decided Malkeet Lnu v. Blanche on June 3, 2026. EOIR and DHS disciplinary counsel filed a Joint Notice of Intent to Discipline and a Joint Petition for Immediate Suspension on June 15, and the Board granted immediate suspension on July 1. The respondent moved to set that order aside on July 6; counsel filed an Amended Notice on July 15 and moved for summary adjudication on July 28; the respondent answered the amended notice on August 14 and filed an Omnibus Brief on August 24.

Whose finding is the AI misconduct?

The findings are the Ninth Circuit's. In this decision the Board did not find for itself that the respondent used AI or misled a court. It took the Ninth Circuit's findings as the predicate and asked only whether the respondent could rebut the presumption that discipline should follow them.

As the Board recounts it, the Ninth Circuit inferred the respondent's actual knowledge of the AI errors in a brief, and his knowing provision of false statements to the court, from the circumstances. The circumstances the Board lists include his claim in a Motion to Correct that a nonexistent case was a "typographical error", his admitted practice of not reading the cases in his firm's brief writers' briefs before filing, his continued insistence in response to an Order to Show Cause that he believed the errors were innocent typographical mistakes, and a Notice of Errata in another case that replaced two erroneous citations without disclosing that they were AI hallucinations.

The respondent argued that he lacked knowledge of the AI use and that the proof was thin: no admission by the brief writer, no draft history or metadata, no prompt or response. The Board called his arguments "effectively a collateral attack on the findings of fact and conclusions of law of the Ninth Circuit on these issues, which we have no authority to entertain in these proceedings." It added that "Mere disagreement with the reasoning and result of the originating disciplinary court does not trigger the requirement for a hearing before an adjudicating official".

How does reciprocal discipline work on this record?

The decision proceeds in two stages, each tied to the Ninth Circuit's order. At the immediate-suspension stage, the Board said the regulations at 8 C.F.R. 1003.103(a)(1) and (4) direct it to suspend a practitioner immediately once a petition is filed with a certified copy of a court record showing suspension or disbarment by any federal court. The record held a certified copy of the June 3 decision, so immediate suspension was proper on the Board's account.

The respondent asked the Board to set that order aside for good cause and in the interest of justice. The Board refused. It found his claims of client hardship "conclusory, lacking in detail, and speculative in nature", and it held that while he is under an order restricting his practice in the Ninth Circuit he does not meet the regulatory definition of an "attorney" at 8 C.F.R. 1001.1(f). It left one door open, in its own words: "Should the respondent obtain a stay or other relief from the Ninth Circuit's order of suspension, this issue may be revisited and reconsidered."

At the summary-discipline stage, the certified Ninth Circuit decision created what the Board, quoting the regulation, called a "rebuttable presumption of the professional misconduct" and that sanctions should follow. On the Board's account the presumption can be rebutted only by clear and convincing evidence of a deprivation of due process, an infirmity of proof, or grave injustice. The respondent failed on all three in this case. He showed no denial of notice or an opportunity to be heard; he did not meaningfully challenge the Ninth Circuit's knowledge findings; and the Board held that financial hardship and other difficulties of suspension do not amount to grave injustice.

The Board also declined to send the matter to a hearing, holding that the respondent had not made a prima facie showing of a material factual dispute. It kept the case in summary discipline proceedings.

What did the Board say about AI itself?

The Board's treatment of AI is brief. The respondent argued that reciprocal discipline for AI-related misconduct was an "unprecedented sanction" the Board had not used, that no other federal circuit had suspended attorneys for generative AI use, and that extending the suspension would "magnify an outlier penalty". Those are his claims as the decision reports them; we have not tested them.

The Board answered by moving the question away from the tool. It wrote that "an attorney must conduct himself or herself in accordance with governing rules of professional conduct regardless of the tools he or she uses to prepare and present cases." It then listed what the Ninth Circuit disciplined: citing cases that did not exist, attributing quotations to opinions that did not contain them, misrepresenting real authority, failing to identify existing law said to support the arguments, knowingly making false statements of law, and failing to correct false statements previously made.

"Any or all of these actions can be taken with or without regard to the use of AI, and any or all of them may render an attorney subject to discipline by an authorized tribunal." On that basis the Board held that applying its discipline rules to AI-related misconduct is not an "outlier penalty". The decision does not say that every AI error leads to discipline. The sanction here followed a federal court's suspension and its findings of knowing false statements.

What exactly does the suspension cover?

The order, as entered, suspends the respondent from practice "before the Board of Immigration Appeals, the Immigration Courts, and DHS for 6 months, effective June 13, 2026." That scope is the Board's; the Ninth Circuit's own suspension covered practice in the Ninth Circuit.

The start date was a choice the decision explains. The Amended Notice proposed that the suspension run from the effective date of the Ninth Circuit's order rather than from the Board's immediate suspension order, and the Board adopted that proposal, citing Matter of Kronegold on its deferential approach and on imposing identical reciprocal discipline. Earlier in the decision it noted that its period of suspension would not exceed the Ninth Circuit's.

Further orders in this one matter direct the respondent to keep complying with the directives in the Board's prior order and to notify the Board of any further disciplinary action, make the order's contents available to the public, including at the Immigration Courts and appropriate DHS offices, and allow him to petition for reinstatement under 8 C.F.R. 1003.107. The decision does not state an end date for the suspension, and we do not compute one.

What we did not verify

What we opened: the full text of Matter of Sethi, 30 I&N Dec. 112 (BIA 2026), Interim Decision #4254, pages 112 to 120, retrieved as a PDF from justice.gov and converted to text. Every fact, date and quotation on this page comes from that file. Quotations are reproduced with straight quotes and apostrophes in place of the typographic ones in the original.

What we did not open: the Ninth Circuit's decision in Malkeet Lnu v. Blanche, 177 F.4th 1014 (9th Cir. 2026); the Board's September 15, 2026 unpublished version, so we cannot say what the editorial changes were; the Board's July 1, 2026 immediate suspension order and its directives; the parties' filings; and the regulations at 8 C.F.R. 1003.101 to 1003.107 and 1001.1(f), which we describe only as the Board quotes or summarizes them. The decision spells the Ninth Circuit case "Malkeet Lnu" in most places and "Makeet Lnu" once; we use the majority spelling.

What we refuse to claim: we do not say the Board found AI misconduct on its own evidence, that it created a new AI standard, that any AI error triggers discipline, or that the respondent is suspended now from a new start date. We do not state when the suspension ends, whether he has sought or obtained reinstatement or any stay, or whether he has challenged the decision. We do not repeat as fact the respondent's claims about what other courts or the Board have done before, and we make no claim about how often the Board has disciplined attorneys for AI-related conduct.

Informational analysis for working professionals, not legal advice. Confirm how any rule applies to your situation with qualified counsel.

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