Lawyers Want Answers About Mississippi Judge’s Made-Up Quotes

Lawyers at the Mississippi Attorney General’s office are asking a federal judge to explain why a now-withdrawn order contained multiple errors, including made-up parties and quotations.

Judge Henry T. Wingate rescinded the July 20 temporary restraining order, which put the brakes on a state law banning schools from teaching diversity, equity and inclusion concepts, two days after it was issued. Wingate replaced the order a day later with a corrected version, which also paused the DEI law, and backdated it to July 20.

The first order included several elements that hadn’t previously appeared in the case, including parties, allegations, and quotations. The original version of the order no longer appears in the public docket for the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

Mississippi’s lawyers are defending the state against efforts by an advocacy group to halt the law, HB 1193. They asked the court on Monday to correct the record of its filings and explain why the TRO with erroneous elements was filed.

It’s another instance this month of lawyers calling out a judge’s order containing several made-up quotes. Last week, a New Jersey federal judge rescinded his own problematic ruling in a case where lawyers defending a biopharma company in a New Jersey shareholder class action flagged the judge’s made-up citations.

Several media outlets, including Bloomberg Law, have cited erroneous portions of Wingate’s original order. The state’s lawyers said that has created “widespread and unnecessary confusion that cannot be easily rectified after the fact with the original TRO order erased from the docket.”

“Without access to the original TRO order, any public observer—including any reporter who publicized the erroneous representations contained in the original TRO order—will find it virtually impossible, by reference to this Court’s docket, to ascertain what has occurred procedurally in connection with the entry and correction of the erroneous original TRO order,” lawyers for the state said Monday.

Lawyers and a spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office didn’t immediately return a request for further comment. Lawyers at the ACLU who are representing the plaintiff, the Mississippi Association of Educators, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Among other made up elements, most of the plaintiffs Judge Wingate named in the original TRO are not parties in the case. Judge Wingate’s first order also alludes to supposed quotations from state law HB1193—“race or sex stereotyping,” and “race or sex scapegoating.” These quotes, which were also repeated in Bloomberg Law’s coverage, do not appear in the law.

A representative for Judge Wingate’s chamber didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The case is Mississippi Association of Educators et al v. Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning et al, S.D. Miss., 3:25-cv-00417, 7/28/25