Ninth Circuit fines and suspends two immigration lawyers over briefs with AI-hallucinated citations and denials of AI use; immigration board follows

The briefs. The two attorneys represented asylum applicants seeking review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order. The opening brief, signed by Sethi, cited two cases that do not exist and attributed quotations to two real opinions in which the quoted language does not appear; the reply brief contained further misattributed quotations and misdescribed holdings. The court granted the petition for review in November 2025.

The denials. Sethi's motion to correct described the two nonexistent cases as typographical errors and proposed replacement cases that, according to the court, do not support the propositions cited. At oral argument Rounds said the citations were garbled, said AI was not used, and only after further questioning conceded that AI might have been used by the person who drafted the briefs, an unlicensed law graduate whose citations no licensed attorney had read.

The concession and the order. Responding to an order to show cause, the attorneys said their firm prohibited AI use, and conceded that the errors were more likely than not the product of unauthorised AI use by the brief writers and a failure to cite check. The court said it was not sanctioning them for using generative AI but for signing and filing briefs with fabricated authorities and for repeated false statements about the errors' source, and that lesser sanctions might have followed a prompt disclosure. It imposed fines, a six-month suspension and two years of AI-use certifications, and referred the order to the State Bar of California.

The reciprocal suspension. The Board of Immigration Appeals relied on the Ninth Circuit suspension to suspend Sethi from practice before the Board, the immigration courts and DHS. It rejected his arguments that he had not known AI was used, that his clients would suffer hardship and that reciprocal discipline for AI-related misconduct was an outlier penalty.

According to the Ninth Circuit's order, both attorneys were fined $2,500 and suspended from practice before the court for six months over briefs whose AI-hallucinated citations they had denied were AI errors; according to the Board of Immigration Appeals, one of them was then suspended from practice before the immigration courts, the Board and DHS for six months.

Ninth Circuit order of 3 June 2026 (No. 24-4790): each attorney personally sanctioned $2,500; both suspended from practice before the court for six months starting ten days after the order; both ordered to give a copy of the order to their clients, opposing counsel and presiding judges in every pending case; the firm's attorneys ordered for two years to state under penalty of perjury in every filing whether generative AI was used and which tool; the Clerk to serve the order on the State Bar of California. The Board of Immigration Appeals granted an immediate suspension of Sethi on 1 July 2026, rejected his motion to set it aside, and imposed a reciprocal six-month suspension from practice before the Board, the immigration courts and DHS, effective 13 June 2026 (decision first issued unpublished on 15 September 2026 and designated as precedent, 30 I&N Dec. 112, on 1 October 2026). Any State Bar of California proceeding is not reported in the inspected sources.