Court Filings, Hallucinations & Sanctions · November 2026
Jackson Fed'n of Teachers v. Fitch
No. 25-60496, Doc. 111-1 (5th Cir. Oct. 22, 2026)
Fifth Circuit vacates a preliminary injunction and orders reassignment after the district court's orders contained AI-hallucinated facts and a nonexistent case.
The district court's temporary restraining order against Mississippi's anti-DEI statute, H.B. 1193, named plaintiffs and defendants who were never parties, relied on declarations from individuals who “may not even exist,” and misquoted the statute.
After these errors surfaced, the district court replaced the order with a “corrected” version backdated to the original date, called the errors “clerical,” and later attributed them to a law clerk's use of AI. At oral argument, the court discovered that even the corrected order cited “Cousins v. School Bd. of City of Norfolk,” a Fourth Circuit case that “does not even exist.”
Calling the proceedings “a botch job,” the Fifth Circuit vacated the injunction and ordered reassignment, reasoning that the judge would have “substantial difficulty” setting aside his views after using “AI-hallucinated ‘facts’” and that public esteem for the judiciary would suffer if the case were returned to him.