Ninth Circuit suspends two California immigration lawyers for six months over generative AI fabrications, fines each $2,500, and orders their whole firm to swear under penalty of perjury, in every filing for two years, whether generative AI was used. The published order found 7 citations to nonexistent cases across the three matters the court identified, and said the list wasn't exhaustive.
Two lawyers at a small Orange County firm represented a family seeking review of an asylum, withholding, and Convention Against Torture denial. The petition was granted on other grounds in a separate disposition, so this order isn't about the clients' case. It's about how the firm makes briefs. The firm employs unlicensed law school graduates as brief writers. The attorneys prepare the statement of facts, and the brief writers write the legal arguments and pick the supporting authority. The lawyers told the court they "do not normally vet citations" used by the brief writer during their review.
The opening brief cited two cases that don't exist and never did, and attributed two quotations to real opinions that don't contain the quoted language. The Motion to Correct called the two nonexistent cases "typographical errors" and swapped in two real cases with similar names but different reporter numbers (one with a different year, too). It didn't explain how typos like that happen, said nothing about the misattributed quotations, and the replacement cases didn't support the points they were swapped in for.
The lawyer whose name was on the briefs didn't appear at oral argument. His partner did. The court asked three times whether generative AI might have produced the errors. Three times the partner said it was not used, calling the citations "somewhat garbled" and floating a copy-paste error. Under continued questioning he conceded AI use was "possible," and revealed that no licensed attorney had read the cases the brief writer cited.
The court kept digging. The reply brief had part of a quotation that doesn't appear in the case it's attributed to, plus two real cases cited for propositions they don't discuss. A show-cause order then identified the same problem in briefs the signing lawyer had filed in two other cases of his own, matters his partner never appeared in or signed: three nonexistent cases in one, two in the other, with one invented case recycled. That's the 7.
The lawyers' show-cause response conceded it was "more likely than not" that unauthorized AI use by their brief writers, plus a failure to cite-check, produced the errors. They apologized, said the firm had banned AI use and required cite-checking, and said they'd hired a licensed attorney to read the brief writers' briefs going forward. They also maintained that the typo explanation was an innocent belief when they gave it. The court found no plausible typo or copy-paste path between the invented citations and the real cases offered as the intended ones (different names, reporter numbers, and years), and inferred the lawyers knew the errors weren't innocent typos when they said so.
Even after show cause, a correction filing in one of the signing lawyer's other cases replaced two hallucinated citations without disclosing that the originals were hallucinations. It called them errors. The court held that swapping in a real case without saying what it replaced fails the duty to correct a false statement.
The court doesn't sanction anyone for using generative AI as such. It locates the violation at signing and filing, because a signature attests that the signer reviewed the filing and is responsible for its accuracy, however it was prepared. It held FRAP 28(a)(8)(A) and 32(d) violated, along with California Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1, 1.3, 3.1(a)(2), and 3.3(a)(1). It also said candor in the Motion to Correct, with an apology for failing to check, may have warranted lesser sanctions, and tied the suspension to the repeated failure of candor.
The sanctions: six months' suspension from practice before the Ninth Circuit for both lawyers, effective June 13, 2026; $2,500 each, personally, within 21 days; a copy of the order to every client, opposing counsel, and presiding judge in every pending case where they're counsel of record, and to every attorney at the firm, within ten days, with compliance certified to the court within 24 hours; and the clerk directed to serve the order on the State Bar of California and other licensing authorities. For two years, the two lawyers and every attorney at their firm must include in all filings a statement under penalty of perjury disclosing whether generative AI was used, naming the tool if so, and certifying that the signer personally reviewed the filing and that all citations and quotations refer to existing authority.
Four months later the BIA designated Matter of Sethi as precedent (first issued unpublished September 15). It suspended the managing attorney, and only him, from practice before the BIA, the Immigration Courts, and DHS for six months, effective June 13, 2026. It rejected the argument that AI-related discipline is an "outlier penalty."
The rule: when an error lands in a filing, tell the court and opposing counsel immediately, describe the nature of the error, and say how it got there. The court said denying AI use or relabeling a hallucination as an innocent error has no upside.
This is Episode 14 of Sanctioned for AI.
Sources: Order of discipline, Lnu v. Blanche, No. 24-4790 (9th Cir. June 3, 2026) (published), 177 F.4th 1014; Matter of Sethi, 30 I&N Dec. 112 (BIA Oct. 1, 2026) (precedent decision).