Fifth Circuit Vacates Mississippi DEI Injunction Over AI Errors

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated an injunction blocking Mississippi's restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools and reassigned the case to another district judge on October 22, Reuters reports.

The appeals court said US District Judge Henry Wingate's rulings included factual claims absent from the record and applied the law incorrectly. It instructed the new judge to consider that the state law applies to educators rather than students and that states have broad authority over public curricula and publicly funded speech.

Wingate previously told Senator Chuck Grassley that fabricated names and nonexistent legal authorities in an initial order resulted from a law clerk's unreviewed use of Perplexity. Wingate later issued a preliminary injunction that continued to block the law, but the appeals court said the number of errors warranted reassignment.