A federal court order in Mississippi named people and organizations that were not parties, misstated the dispute, and included quotations and legal references that could not be verified. The order was later corrected. Months afterward, Judge Henry T. Wingate said a law clerk had used Perplexity as a drafting aid—not that Wingate personally typed the ruling into an AI chatbot—and accepted responsibility for the court’s failure to catch the errors.
What happened in the Mississippi case?
The incident involved Jackson Federation of Teachers, et al. v. Lynn Fitch, et al., case 3:25-cv-00417-HTW-LGI, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. The plaintiffs challenged provisions of Mississippi House Bill 1193 concerning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and so-called “divisive concepts” in public schools. The case docket is available at Justia’s case listing.
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On July 20, 2025, Wingate signed a temporary restraining order (TRO). A TRO is short-term emergency relief; it is not a final decision on a law’s constitutionality. The order temporarily blocked enforcement of specified parts of HB 1193 while the court considered whether a preliminary injunction was justified. The signed document is filing 51.
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Readers and lawyers identified material that did not fit the actual lawsuit. Reports described:
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- Names of organizations and individuals who were not parties in the case.
- Descriptions of allegations that did not match the plaintiffs’ filings.
- Quotations that were incorrect or could not be located in the cited material.
- Misquoted portions of Mississippi law.
- Case references and legal propositions that could not be verified.
Some coverage characterized these passages as AI “hallucinations.” That label describes a possible failure mode, not a judicial finding that the software generated every error. The court record establishes that the document contained inaccuracies; it does not establish the origin of each sentence.
Was Wingate personally using AI?
Not according to the later explanation released by Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office. In an October 22, 2025 response to Grassley, Wingate said a law clerk used Perplexity “as a foundational drafting assistant” to synthesize publicly available information from the docket. The response is available from the senator’s office at this letter.
Wingate said the court did not intend to delegate judicial decision-making to an AI system. The draft was supposed to undergo human review, but that review did not identify the mistakes before the order was signed and docketed. He described the failure as the court’s responsibility. Thus, “the judge used AI to issue a ruling” compresses several different events—staff research, drafting, review, signature and filing—into one claim that the available evidence does not support literally.
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The July 20 version did not remain the operative document indefinitely. After the errors were identified, the order was withdrawn, corrected or replaced around July 22–23. A later August 1 order reportedly referred to the problem as clerical errors. Correcting the filing addressed the immediate record, but it could not change the fact that an inaccurate judicial document had been publicly available and potentially relied upon.
The court then issued a separate preliminary-injunction order on August 18, 2025. That proceeding involved additional briefing and consideration of the request beyond the emergency TRO. The later order is filing 74. The procedural distinction matters: the flawed document was not an AI-decided final judgment, and the subsequent injunction ruling was a different order.
Key dates in the document trail
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 20, 2025 | Wingate signed the temporary restraining order concerning HB 1193. |
| July 22–23, 2025 | The error-filled version was withdrawn, corrected or replaced. |
| August 1, 2025 | A later order referred to the problem as clerical errors. |
| August 18, 2025 | The court issued a separate preliminary-injunction order. |
| October 22, 2025 | Wingate sent Grassley his response acknowledging a law clerk’s Perplexity use. |
| October 23, 2025 | The Senate Judiciary Committee released the judges’ responses. |
A separate New Jersey case raised the same concern
The Mississippi matter was not the only 2025 episode involving AI-assisted judicial drafting. Judge Julien Xavier Neals of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey acknowledged that generative AI had been used in preparing a flawed order in the CorMedix securities litigation. That separate order reportedly contained inaccurate parties, incorrect or fabricated quotations and other errors. The cases involved different judges, courts and litigants; they should not be treated as one proceeding.
Grassley, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sought explanations from Wingate, Neals and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The committee’s release is at the Senate Judiciary Committee website. Grassley said courts must ensure that AI use does not undermine litigants’ rights or equal treatment. That is congressional oversight and criticism, not a formal finding that either judge committed misconduct.
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Judicial documents carry operative authority
A mistaken name in a private draft is a quality problem. In a signed order, it can affect what parties must do, how the public understands the dispute and what an appellate court can review. A corrected version may not undo confusion created while the first version was available.
Legal accuracy requires record-level checking
A judicial order must correctly identify the parties, procedural posture, facts supported by the record, governing law, requested relief and legal standard. Fluent prose is not evidence that those elements are right. Search-enabled systems can produce plausible but false quotations or authorities even when they have access to public webpages.
Due process and auditability are at stake
If a ruling relies on facts or arguments never presented by either side, litigants may be unable to respond meaningfully. Incorrect citations also make it harder for lawyers, later courts and the public to audit the reasoning. Those concerns exist regardless of whether the error began with an AI tool, a human typist or copied boilerplate.
Confidentiality is a separate issue
Even an accurate output could create privacy, privilege or sealed-record problems if confidential filings, personal data or attorney work product are entered into a third-party system. Factual verification therefore cannot be the only safeguard.
What this incident does—and does not—show
- It does show: AI-assisted material entered a federal court’s draft and an inadequate review process allowed inaccurate content into a filed order.
- It does not show: that Wingate personally entered prompts, that Perplexity generated every identified error, or that AI autonomously decided the case.
- It does not establish: a universal federal rule either permitting or banning judicial AI use, or a formal ethics violation by Wingate.
- It does show: why disclosure, confidentiality controls and line-by-line verification matter when software assists judicial work.
What guidance exists for federal courts?
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts described an AI task force and issued interim guidance in 2025. The guidance encouraged careful review and raised whether AI use in judicial functions should be disclosed. Federal courts may adopt different local practices; there is no single rule that makes every use acceptable or every use forbidden.
The practical questions are narrower and more important: What task did the system perform? Was confidential information entered? Did a human verify every factual and legal assertion against primary sources? Was disclosure required or advisable? Can the parties and an appeals court reconstruct how the decision was reached?
The bottom line for readers
The strongest account is not that a judge handed a case to ChatGPT. Wingate’s chambers later acknowledged that a law clerk used Perplexity to help assemble a draft, and an inaccurate TRO was filed before being corrected. The central institutional failure was inadequate verification before a document carrying the authority of a federal court entered the public record.
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