The Fifth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against Mississippi H.B. 1193 and ordered the case reassigned to a different district judge, citing hallucinated content in the district court's TRO and separate legal error

What did the Fifth Circuit decide?

It vacated the preliminary injunction and sent the case back with an order to reassign. The disposition reads: "The Chief Judge of the Southern District of Mississippi is DIRECTED to assign this case to a different district judge for all further proceedings." Judge Haynes wrote "I concur in the last paragraph of the majority opinion" and urged a fuller look at the bill on remand.

Mississippi enacted H.B. 1193 in April 2025, a law designed to keep public education funds from being spent on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Plaintiffs, a mix of teachers, professors, students, parents and organizations, brought a pre-enforcement facial challenge. Judge Henry Wingate issued the TRO and then the preliminary injunction, and the state defendants appealed. The opinion also sets out instructions on the scope of H.B. 1193 for remand under Moody; this article does not analyze them.

What does the opinion say about the hallucinated content?

It describes a TRO with "several factual assertions nowhere to be found in the record, or indeed, in any proceeding of the case." Per the panel, the original TRO named eleven individuals and organizations that had never been party to the case and two officials who were not sued. It asserted without evidence that three post-secondary institutions had cancelled initiatives and that staff at another school had been told not to discuss certain topics. It misquoted H.B. 1193 as applying to terms that, per the panel, appear nowhere in the act. And it referenced declarations of four individuals who "do not appear in the record at all and may not even exist."

The corrected TRO, which the preliminary injunction incorporated by reference, still cited "Cousins v. School Bd. of City of Norfolk, 503 F.2d 422, 426-27 (4th Cir. 1974)." The panel wrote that the case does not exist and called it "an apparent AI hallucination." A footnote states that the cited page falls in the middle of a Sixth Circuit decision, United States v. Anderson, and that the pincite points to pages of a Second Circuit decision, and that neither discusses the proposition cited. Because the injunction order incorporated the analysis of the TRO, the panel said the hallucinated case was "arguably part of the shoddy reasoning of the preliminary injunction, too."

What does the opinion say about AI, and what does it leave out?

The opinion recounts that, after Senator Chuck Grassley accused the court of using AI to prepare the TRO, Judge Wingate wrote a letter saying a law clerk had used AI to assist drafting an earlier version of the TRO that was docketed by mistake. The panel wrote that he "blamed the errors on his law clerk's employment of AI." It adds that he characterized the errors as clerical and as unrelated to "core legal reasoning," and that he claimed the hallucinated claims had no bearing on the court's reasoning. The panel replied that it was "not clear" how so many mistaken facts could fail to affect the reasoning, and that the corrected TRO did not explain it. We did not open either letter; this is the panel's account.

On the legal errors, the panel wrote that the district court, "or perhaps, being charitable, its AI agent," ignored and manipulated governing law. That is an aside, not a finding. The opinion identifies no tool and makes no separate finding on how the fabricated content entered the order beyond the judge's account. This article does not attribute any error to AI on its own authority.

One point in the opinion's own chronology is inconsistent. The body says the admission came "Fifteen days later" than the Grassley accusation, while the footnoted letters are dated October 2 and October 6, 2025. We do not rely on the sequence.

Why did the panel order reassignment, and was hallucination the only ground?

The panel found that the Fifth Circuit's reassignment tests were met on these facts. It invoked its supervisory power and acknowledged that reassignment is "extraordinary" and "rarely invoked." It noted the circuit has not settled which of two tests governs and found both satisfied. Under the first, it reasoned that excising the AI-hallucinated facts from the original TRO "without explaining why the order should still stand" may already show substantial difficulty in setting aside views based on erroneous findings. It added that, given the errors, it would be an "understandable" temptation, though "obviously unjust," for the judge to try to prove his initial view right. It then found that public esteem for the judiciary and the cost-benefit balance favored reassignment, and that under the second test an objective observer might question the impartiality of the proceedings.

The reasoning is tied to these facts: an order replaced without explanation and backdated, a denied request to restore the original, and a later citation to a non-existent case. The opinion does not say that hallucinated content in an order requires reassignment.

Hallucination was not the only ground for vacatur. The panel wrote that "the district court got the law wrong." It faulted the orders for describing the Moody v. NetChoice framework as "supposedly" required, for reading Trump v. CASA as supporting all-or-nothing injunctions when, in the panel's view, it says the opposite, and for gesturing at putative class certification to justify statewide scope without taking Rule 23 seriously. It also rejected the order's suggestion that an unsettled area of law justified a "pause" by injunction. Anyone citing this opinion for a point about AI should note that vacatur rests on these errors as well.

What does this mean for litigators, judges' clerks and court-technology counsel, and what might they do?

Litigators. The opinion is an example of an appellate court treating fabricated content in an order as part of the basis for relief. It states no duty for counsel to detect or document such content. It recounts that the defendants identified factual inaccuracies in a motion to clarify and asked that the original be restored, and a footnote says the panel was "grateful" and "lucky" that the defendants had filed a copy of the original as an exhibit. Read that as an account of what happened, not a requirement.

Judges' clerks. The panel's reasoning turned on what followed discovery of the errors: no explanation, a replacement order, and a description of fabricated parties and hearings as clerical. The opinion sets no standard for clerk supervision or for AI use in chambers.

Court-technology counsel. The opinion is a decision in one case, not a policy instrument, and it does not establish a verification standard for judicial drafting. For how courts have addressed AI directly, see the AI court rules tracker linked below.

Practice suggestions (ours, not the court's):

• When an adverse order cites parties, declarations, quotations or authorities you cannot find in the record, check each against the docket and the reporter.
• If a court replaces or corrects an order, keep a copy of the original and note the docketing dates. The opinion shows why the original mattered here.
• If you ask the court to restore a superseded order or to explain a change, say what the change means for the reasoning. The panel found the missing explanation significant.

What we did not verify

What we opened: the full slip opinion at the Fifth Circuit website (28 pages, including the Haynes concurrence). Every quotation on this page comes from that file.

What we did not open: the two letters cited in footnotes 8 and 9 (Grassley, October 6, 2025; Wingate, October 2, 2025), the district court orders themselves, and the docket. We did not verify whether a mandate has issued, whether rehearing or en banc review has been sought, or any reporter citation. The first page of the opinion carries no published or unpublished label; it is served from the court's /opinions/pub/ path and we saw no "not for publication" notice, so we treat its precedential status as unconfirmed.

What we refuse to claim: that AI caused any error, that any sanction or disciplinary referral occurred, that the opinion creates a duty for counsel, that hallucinated content alone requires reassignment, or anything about the constitutionality of H.B. 1193.

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