JACKSON, Mississippi — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Thursday, October 22 threw out the preliminary injunction that had blocked Mississippi's restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes in public schools and universities, and took the extraordinary step of removing Senior U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate from the case, Law360 and Fox News reported.

Source: Law360

Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith called the proceedings in the district court "a botch job, to say the least" and wrote that Judge Wingate "carelessly exercised his Article III power by issuing sloppy edicts based on falsehoods and fabrications." The district court, Smith wrote, "or perhaps, being charitable, its AI agent," had ignored and manipulated governing law "apparently to satisfy a policy agenda." The panel directed the chief judge of the Southern District of Mississippi to reassign the case to a different judge — a power the court itself described as extraordinary and rarely invoked.

Source: Mississippi Independent

An order built on things that do not exist

The panel found that the temporary restraining order Judge Wingate signed on July 20, 2025 named 11 plaintiffs who had never been parties to the case and two defendants who had not been sued, claimed three universities had already cancelled DEI programming with no evidence in the record, quoted House Bill 1193 as banning phrases that do not appear in the act, and cited declarations from four people who, the panel wrote, do not appear in the record "and may not even exist." Even the corrected replacement order still cited a case, Cousins v. School Board of City of Norfolk, that does not exist.

Source: Mississippi Independent

Mississippi officials flagged the errors two days after the original order, and it was replaced. Judge Wingate later told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley that the errors resulted from a law clerk's unvetted use of the AI platform Perplexity, Lawyer Monthly reported. The state argued on appeal that the AI-related errors undermined confidence in the district court's handling of the case.

Source: Lawyer Monthly

The ruling means House Bill 1193 — the 2025 law that bars public schools and universities from requiring diversity training, maintaining offices or courses that promote a list of concepts the act defines, and giving racial or sexual preference in hiring or contracting, with repeat violators losing state funds — can be enforced again while the case proceeds before a new judge. The panel did not decide whether the law is constitutional, and the teachers, professors, students, parents and organisations who sued in June 2025 can ask the full Fifth Circuit to rehear the case. Judge Wingate remains a federal judge — he has served on the Mississippi bench for 41 years and was the first African American appointed to a life-tenured federal judgeship in the state — but he will no longer hear this lawsuit.