A federal appeals court on Thursday vacated the preliminary injunction that had been entered against Mississippi's 2025 ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools and universities, and it ordered the lawsuit sent to a different district judge.

The Fifth Circuit panel, which heard arguments on Aug. 31, was blunt about what had happened in the lower court. "The proceedings in the district court were a botch job, to say the least," the opinion says. It goes on to say that Judge Henry Wingate, the district judge, "carelessly exercised his Article III power by issuing sloppy edicts based on falsehoods and fabrications."

The measure, House Bill 1193, became law in April 2025. Teachers, students and advocacy groups challenged it in the Southern District of Mississippi in a case captioned Jackson Federation of Teachers v. Fitch.

The trouble began in July 2025, when Wingate issued a temporary restraining order against the law. As the ABA Journal described it, the order named parties and allegations that were not part of the case, cited declarations from four people that did not exist and quoted language that does not appear in the statute. Wingate pulled the order after the state attorney general's office raised concerns and substituted a corrected version. He later said the original was an early draft that had not been through the usual layers of review in his chambers, and in a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley he said drafts there now get an independent review by a second law clerk.

Wingate then entered a preliminary injunction, and the state appealed.

The panel raised the question of a new judge on its own. Ten days before the hearing, it directed the lawyers to be ready to address whether the case should be reassigned on the court's own motion, apart from the state's request for the same relief. At the argument, Mississippi Deputy Solicitor General Anthony Shults said the injunction "relied on the legal reasoning in the flawed TRO, which we think is very concerning." Judge Jerry Smith pressed the lawyer defending the injunction on why an erroneous citation survived in the corrected order. "Don't you think that's a pretty serious matter?" he asked.

Robert McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice, who represents student groups challenging the law, argued that the injunction should stand because Wingate himself had made the decision.

In sending the case elsewhere, the panel applied a standard that asks, among other things, whether reassignment is advisable "to preserve the appearance of justice." The lawsuit is not over. It now returns to the district court, where a different judge will take up the challenge.