To Presume to Overrule a State Anti-DEI Executive Order, a, Get This, DEI Judge Uses AI to Write An Opinion Filled With Fake Cases

Huh, a DEI hire resorting to AI to do his homework for him. And all to stop the people from ending DEI practices.

Who could have seen this coming.

There is good news: the Appeals Court was so shocked by the complete DEI incompetence on display that they not only reversed him, they kicked him off the case entirely.

The decision is a victory for Republican Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch's office, which had argued that US District Judge Henry Wingate's apparent misuse of generative AI tools had compromised the integrity of the judicial process.

US Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, writing for the three-judge ​panel, took Wingate to task for a "botch job" that led to a ruling that contained "sloppy edicts" and "several factual assertions nowhere to be found in the record" and got the ​law wrong.

Really? A DEI judge botching the law and making sloppy mistakes?

And using cheaters' tools instead of writing his paper himself?

First time we're seeing anything like this. "Few such cases," I would say.

This is very harsh: Usually judges protect each other like media hacks protect their fellow guild members.

But this appeals panel is absolutely blasting this complete DEI incompetent.

"The district court -- or perhaps, being charitable, its AI agent -- ignored and manipulated governing law, apparently to satisfy a policy agenda," Smith wrote.

The appeals ⁠court laid out detailed instructions for how the new judge should assess the law.

It made clear it does not apply to students, and it said that while states have broad power ​to regulate their own curricula and publicly funded speech, the new judge will need to balance the state's interests against the individual speech rights of teachers and professors.

Apparently the DEI judge pretended the law said that students would be banned from discussing race under the law, which is a complete fabrication, either created by himself, his DEI clerk, or "hallucinated" by the AI agent he used to do his homework for him.

But... if it was just the AI agent -- did this guy not bother checking the opinion he was going to sign his name to to make sure the cases cited said what the AI said they said, or even existed at all?

Apparently not.

Gee, Judge Wingate, you're right -- DEI really is super-important and leads to excellence.

...

The case before the 5th Circuit concerned a challenge by teachers, professors, students and advocacy groups to a law Republican-led Mississippi enacted last year that bars government-run educational institutions from mandating activities like diversity training or promoting DEI.

The plaintiffs argued the law violated the US Constitution's First and Fourteenth Amendments, and convinced Wingate to issue a temporary restraining order blocking its implementation.

But that order was later found to contain fabricated names and nonexistent legal authorities, ​prompting scrutiny from Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the ​current chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Wingate in ⁠a subsequent letter told Grassley that the errors stemmed from a law clerk's unvetted use of the AI platform Perplexity. Even after the errors in that initial order, Wingate continued to block the law by issuing a preliminary injunction.

Lawyers for Mississippi argued on appeal that even after Wingate replaced the faulty ​ruling, the AI-related errors cast doubt on the court's core legal reasoning, and they urged the appeals court to reassign the case.

...

But Smith said the case "easily calls for reassignment." He said given the number of errors in Wingate's ruling, the judge might be tempted in future proceedings to want to unjustly find a way "to prove that, even with ⁠the correct law ​and fact, that his initial view should prevail."

This is obviously grounds for impeachment and removal. We'll see if Senate Republicans have the courage and conviction to do the right thing.

I doubt they will.

Update: From Courthouse news, via Ed Morrissey, more spicy quotes from the smackdown:

The panel ordered that the case be assigned to a different judge on remand, finding that Wingate had based his decision "on impoverished legal analysis that barely paid lip-service to the precedents of the Supreme Court or this court, seeming at times purposely to misconstrue the law by manipulating the words of statutes and cases, without regard to their texts' meaning as a whole."

The panel noted factual errors in a temporary restraining order that appeared to be the result of AI hallucinations, including naming plaintiffs and defendants who were not parties to the case, quoting terms that did not actually appear in the act and citing evidence not in the record.

So racist, Appeals Court.

Be better, Appeals Court. #BeBetter.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:10 PM

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