U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate admitted he screwed up when he issued an order loaded with phony citations generated by artificial intelligence. Such misuse of AI has already ensnared two Mississippi lawyers and Butler Snow's Alabama office. Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley directed the federal judge to explain why the flawed order ever saw the light of day and questioned if there was a coverup.
The Jackson Federation of Teachers sued Attorney General Lynn Fitch and other parties to block the state's new law banning the use of DEI in public schools, agencies, and universities. Judge Wingate issued a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of the law on July 20. Unfortunately for the Court, someone used artificial intelligence to draft the order. Thus the order was filled with errors, non-existent cases, and misquotes. Earlier post.
Blaming his clerk, Judge Wingate pulled the order from the docket and replaced it with a corrected version. No reason was given for his action. Judge Wingate denied the Attorney General's motion to correct the docket and preserve the record.
The controversy drew the attention of Senator Grassley. He questioned Judge Wingate about the case in a letter earlier this month. The good Senator wanted to know:
The letters directed Judge Wingate to answer several questions:
* Did Judge Wingate or anyone in his office use AI to prepare the July 20 order?
* Was any sealed or confidential information entered into an AI service?
* How was the July 20 order drafted?
* Please explain the cause of each error in the order.
* Explain why the original order was removed from public view. Why doesn't the corrected order refer to the original order?
* What actions has he taken to ensure such misuse of AI never happens again?
Judge Wingate responded Tuesday with his own letter to the Judiciary Committee. The federal judge said a clerk improperly used AI:
In the case of the Court’s Order issued July 20, 2025, a law clerk utilized a generative artificial intelligence (“GenAI”) tool known as Perplexity strictly as a foundational drafting assistant to synthesize publicly available information on the docket. The law clerk who used GenAI in this case did not input any sealed, privileged, confidential, or otherwise non-public case information.
The order in question was an early draft and had not yet gone through a review that checks the citations. Judge Wingate said it should have never been entered in the docket. The veteran jurist defended removing the faulty opinion from the docket without notation:
While there are no applicable policies regarding marking a corrected or amended opinion with a notation reflecting that the decision was substantively altered, the law clerk ensured the docket reflected an accurate history and chronology of the case by entering a Text Order on July 23, 2025, granting the defendant’s unopposed motion to clarify and by updating the July 20, 2025, docket entry to reflect the Order had been replaced. I thought that it would be confusing to leave a flawed opinion on the record because of the errors and inaccuracies that existed in the Order. Because it was not the final opinion, I did not want parties, including pro se litigants, to believe this draft order should be cited in future cases. For these reasons, I removed the inaccurate Order from public view and will not re- docket it. However, I have verified that the clerk’s office will maintain a copy of the errant Order in accordance with applicable record retention requirements.
Judge Wingate added neither he nor the Southern District of Mississippi have any rules regarding the use of AI by litigants.
16 comments:
The quickest Wingate has ever responded in his life-
Without this response this could have been called "Wingate-gate."
At least Judge Wingate is taking responsibility and acting like a mature person. He's a good judge, slow a lot of the time although I know he has had some health issues, but he really does care about the law.
I agree, at least he owned up to it and admitted the mistake. Good on him.
Hmm...., this seems quite forgiving compared to what typically happens when it's a lawyer, as opposed to a judge, who gets caught using AI.
And, no, passing the blame off to your law clerk or other staff isn't "taking responsibility," or whatever Grassley and the others want to call it. In the mid 2010's (before AI was a meaningful thing), I was a law clerk for an appellate court for five years. Judges take responsibility for the orders they enter. Period.
“You’re Fired!”
Clerks are a dime a dozen
Law clerks are generally young academics who distinguish themselves with their writing and research skills enough to be trusted by older more experienced judges. The new technology including but not limited to AI has created potential pitfalls which judges and senior lawyers did not confront 30 years ago. New tech new problems. The young rely on the technology because that's what they are taught. What happened to Wingate can and will undoubtedly happen to senior jurists nationwide. They must realize that they cannot be so trusting of the young talents they hire to write for them especially when there are lawyers out there anxious to embarrass them.
Perplexity? wow That's actually the worse one.
Impeach and Replace
“Senator, I am truly sorry I got caught. I blame somebody else. It won’t happen again until the next time. I ask for forgiveness.” Duh Judge
In true Jackson fashion: It’s the clerk’s fault, right?
If Mississippi has so many bad judges (like Wingate or Hinds County or DeSoto County), maybe we can replace them with SEC Referees…oh, wait.
"Clerks are a dime a dozen"
Not true. Research and writing isn't nearly as easy as some seem to think it is. They are skills that take years to develop. And AI is making those skills even more scarce.
Like getting a speeding ticket. Wingate is not alone. He just got caught.
12:00 "Senator remember to cover your own ass. AI will make fools of us all".
Good on Wingate for admitting his office made a mistake. Kingfish, learned expert who also attended law school, could take a lesson.
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