Appeals court lifts block on Mississippi DEI law and orders case moved to a new judge

A federal appeals court on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, vacated a preliminary injunction that had kept Mississippi from enforcing its 2025 law restricting diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools and universities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit also directed the chief judge of the Southern District of Mississippi to assign the case to a different district judge.¹

Judge Jerry E. Smith wrote the opinion in Jackson Federation of Teachers v. Fitch, No. 25-60496, joined by Judge Kurt Engelhardt. Judge Catharina Haynes concurred only in the final paragraph, which vacates the injunction and orders reassignment. She wrote that the remand should take “a more full look” at the law and that teachers must not be limited in teaching students not to discriminate as Title VII sets out.¹

The law

Mississippi enacted House Bill 1193 in April 2025, the opinion says. As the panel describes it, the law bars public schools and colleges from requiring DEI programs or diversity training, acting against students who disagree with listed concepts and keeping programs, courses or offices that promote those concepts. It exempts scholarly research, creative work, student groups not funded by the state and accreditation requirements.¹

The district court orders

Teachers, professors, students, parents and several groups sued in June 2025. U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate entered a temporary restraining order on July 20, 2025. According to the opinion, that order named 11 people and groups who were never parties, attributed terms to the law that are not in it and cited declarations from four people absent from the record. After the state flagged the errors, Wingate replaced the order with a version dated July 20 and called the errors “clerical.”¹

In a letter the panel cites, Wingate wrote that a law clerk had used AI to help draft an earlier version of the order that was docketed by mistake. According to the opinion, the letter said he pulled the original from the docket so it would not cause confusion, and he described the errors as clerical because they involved a “failure to confirm the accuracy of certain information,” not “core legal reasoning or the ultimate judgment on the merits.” Bloomberg Law reported that the clerk used the AI tool Perplexity.¹² Wingate granted the preliminary injunction on Aug. 18, 2025, concluding the law was unconstitutionally vague and, on its face, ran afoul of the First Amendment. The panel wrote that the corrected order, which the injunction incorporated, still cited a case that “does not even exist.”¹

The panel’s reasoning

The panel called the district court proceedings “a botch job, to say the least.” It held that the injunction did not apply the Supreme Court’s test for facial challenges from Moody v. NetChoice and misread Trump v. CASA on the injunction’s scope. It also wrote that an injunction requires a finding that challengers are likely to win, not that a legal question is unsettled. It wrote that the judge “would therefore reasonably be expected to have substantial difficulty” setting aside earlier views.¹

The two sides

The plaintiffs argued that the law would ban “discussion of civil rights history,” among other subjects, the opinion says; the panel rejected that reading. The state argued the law has many constitutional applications.¹ Rob McDuff, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the court’s reading “good news for public school teachers and students throughout the state,” Mississippi Today reported. McDuff earlier told one of the appellate judges that the AI-related mistake was a serious one but said “it’s not as if AI told Judge Wingate to grant” the injunction, the outlet reported. Deputy Solicitor General Anthony Shults told the panel in September that the state has the right to regulate what public educators teach and that a new judge should take the case, according to the outlet.³

What the records do not show

• Mississippi Today’s report did not include a response to the ruling from Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office or from Wingate.³
• The records do not say which judge will receive the case or whether any party will seek further review.¹
• The opinion dates Wingate’s letter Oct. 2, 2025, and Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Oct. 6, 2025, but says Wingate responded 15 days after Grassley.¹
• This description of House Bill 1193 comes from the opinion; the Mississippi Legislature’s website could not be reached to check the enrolled text.¹