AI hallucinations derail debate over Mississippi’s DEI ban in schools

Mississippi officials told an appeals panel that a lower court order blocking the state's crackdown on "divisive concepts" was tainted by the use of artificial intelligence.(CN) — Mississippi officials asked a Fifth Circuit panel Monday to lift a federal judge’s preliminary injunction blocking portions of a state law passed last year prohibiting diversity, equity and inclusion in public schools — and the lower court’s use of artificial intelligence might help their case.Mississippi Deputy Solicitor General Anthony Shults told the three-judge panel that civil liberties advocates are overstating the scope of the law by arguing it bars all education related to topics like race.“It only bars endorsing specific divisive concepts about race, not the teaching of race at all,” Shults said.But Mississippi Center for Justice attorney Rob McDuff argued on behalf of the plaintiffs that the law, known as House Bill 1193, goes much further than that. He said the law could even prohibit discussion of slavery as a cause of the Civil War.The dispute centers around a portion of the law stating schools are not permitted to “engage in divisive concepts as defined in” two different sections of the law.The first section lists out eight prohibited “divisive concepts,” such as that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race, sex, color, national origin, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”The other section provides a definition for “diversity training,” a term used in another portion of the law prohibiting schools from requiring such trainings. The section defines “diversity training” as “any formal or informal education, seminars, workshops or institutional program that focus on increasing awareness or understanding of issues related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin.”The plaintiffs — a coalition of groups and individuals represented by the ACLU of Mississippi and partner organizations who are seeking to challenge the law on behalf of teachers, parents and students in Mississippi public schools and universities — argue this means the law bans any education on issues like race and sex, including slavery or women’s suffrage.McDuff told the panel it’s “clear” the law is unconstitutionally vague.“What does engagement mean?” he asked. “Does it really mean that you cannot discuss issues related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation and national origin, even though some of those issues have been part of classes for years, even decades?”U.S. Circuit Judge Catharina Haynes asked if the parties had discussed whether the Legislature could make a “slight change” to the law to fix the plaintiffs’ concerns, but both sides said they had not had such a discussion.Part of the discussion at Monday’s hearing focused on the lower court’s use of AI to draft an order. In a letter last year, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate about a temporary restraining order he’d issued in the case containing significant errors that was subsequently removed from the docket and replaced with a corrected version.In response to Grassley’s letter, Wingate, a Ronald Reagan appointee, acknowledged a law clerk had used AI to draft an early version of the order, which was then mistakenly docketed without undergoing review.However, Shults told the panel that the corrected order still contains at least one error, as it cites a court case that appears to not exist. Wingate incorporated that order as part of his reasoning for the preliminary injunction currently on appeal.“The district court’s AI-infected, error-plagued TRO raises significant concerns about the court’s deliberative process, and those concerns were only heightened by the court’s actions after that when it removed the TRO from the public docket, stealth replaced that order with a backdated, amended version that still appears to contain at least one AI-related hallucination,” Shults said.Smith suggested the proper solution in light of these concerns is to vacate the injunction and send the case back to the lower court with instructions for the district’s chief judge to assign the case to a different judge.But McDuff urged the panel to leave the preliminary injunction in place. The court’s use of AI to draft an order is “serious,” he said, but “it’s not as if AI told Judge Wingate to grant the TRO.” He argued allowing the challenged provisions to take effect would be “extremely disruptive.”“If you lift this injunction, school districts, school boards, teachers and students from kindergarten to graduate school in Mississippi are going to be dealing with provisions that in many ways are incomprehensible and, if you look at the language, could be read extremely broadly to limit all kinds of issues that have been part of class discussions in Mississippi for years,” McDuff said.U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Kurt Engelhardt, a Donald Trump appointee, joined Haynes, a George W. Bush appointee, on the panel.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads