AIFoPa-2026-0048
Date of Record: 23 Oct 2026
4 min read
The Pincite Belonged to Avis Rent A Car
A federal judge in Mississippi blocked a state law with an order his law clerk had drafted using AI, and an appeals court has now taken the case away.
On 22 October 2026 the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a 28-page opinion. An appeals court reviews the decisions of lower courts. This one sits in New Orleans and hears appeals from Mississippi. Its first finding fits on one line. “The proceedings in the district court were a botch job, to say the least.”
The case concerns House Bill 1193, a Mississippi law passed in April 2025. It restricts diversity, equity and inclusion programmes in public schools and universities. Teachers, professors, students, parents and campus groups sued to stop it. They are the plaintiffs, the side that brings the case. The state officials who enforce the law are the defendants.
The case went to Judge Henry T. Wingate of the Southern District of Mississippi. He has been a federal judge since 1985. On 20 July 2025 he issued a temporary restraining order. A temporary restraining order is an emergency order that stops a law until the court can hear the case.
The order named eleven plaintiffs who were not in the case. It named two defendants who had not been sued. It relied on declarations from four people who are not in the record. It quoted phrases from House Bill 1193 that do not appear in House Bill 1193.
Two days later the defendants asked the judge to correct the order. That day the order left the docket. A docket is the public list of everything filed in a case. A corrected version took its place, dated 20 July. The judge called the errors “clerical.”
The judge later explained the errors in a letter dated 2 October 2025. A law clerk had used AI to help draft an earlier version. That version had been docketed by mistake. The letter put the errors down to a “failure to confirm the accuracy of certain information.”
The corrected order cited Cousins v. School Board of City of Norfolk, a 1974 Fourth Circuit case. At the appeal hearing it emerged that this case does not exist. Its citation was 503 F.2d 422, which means volume 503, page 422, of a standard series of law reports.
A pincite is a reference to the exact pages that support a point. This pincite, pages 426 to 427 of volume 503, belonged to Avis Rent A Car System v. United States. Page 422 falls in the middle of a Sixth Circuit case. Neither case discusses the point.
On 18 August 2025 the judge granted a preliminary injunction. A preliminary injunction blocks a law while the case continues. It incorporated the corrected order by reference. The case that does not exist came with it. The appeals court added that, had the case existed, it would not have been binding in the Fifth Circuit anyway.
Rob McDuff, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the appeals court the error was serious. He also told it that “it’s not as if AI told Judge Wingate to grant” the order. The appeals court vacated, or cancelled, the injunction. It sent the case back to the district court under a different judge. Its own precedents call reassignment “extraordinary” and “rarely invoked.” It found that this case “easily calls for reassignment.”
The opinion does not settle who wrote what. At one point it attributes the misreading of the law to “the district court—or perhaps, being charitable, its AI agent.” The Bureau has filed the incident under the judge’s name. A space has been left for the agent’s.