Was Scott v. Illinois Human Rights Comm'n sanctioned over AI-generated citations?

Scott v. Illinois Human Rights Comm'n (CA Illinois (1d), July 28, 2026) is a documented matter involving citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The recorded outcome was: Monetary penalty: $15,000 payable to the clerk of the Appellate Court, First District, within 30 days; opinion forwarded to the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. $15,000 in monetary penalties.

Which AI tool was involved in Scott v. Illinois Human Rights Comm'n?

The matter records ChatGPT as the generative tool associated with the unverified citations in Scott v. Illinois Human Rights Comm'n.

July 28, 2026 · AI sanctions database

Scott v. Illinois Human Rights Comm'n

Scott v. Illinois Human Rights Comm'n is one matter in the Veritas record of US court proceedings involving AI-generated citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The summary below is drawn from the underlying court document, linked at the foot of this page.

Court: CA Illinois (1d)
Date: July 28, 2026
Party: Lawyer
AI tool: ChatGPT
Outcome: Monetary penalty: $15,000 payable to the clerk of the Appellate Court, First District, within 30 days; opinion forwarded to the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission
Penalty: $15,000 in monetary penalties.

FineBar referralProfessional sanction

What the record shows

The Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, sanctioned petitioner's counsel under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 375 after his briefs cited one case the court could not locate in any reporter, five real cases that do not contain the cited principle or quoted language, and four statutory quotations the court could not match to the applicable version of the statute. Responding to a show-cause order, counsel conceded the citations and stated he uses a premier corporate ChatGPT subscription and cross-referenced the citations in Lexis-Nexis but overlooked the errors. The court set a rate of $1,500 for each of the ten misstatements, ordered $15,000 paid to the clerk within 30 days, and directed the clerk to send the opinion to the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.

This entry reflects the court document as filed. The citations at issue could not be located in the reporters named at the time of the order. The reading here is descriptive of the public record and is not legal advice.

Source documents

Primary court document ↗ · CourtListener record ↗

The test this filing did not run

Every matter in this record shares one mechanism: a citation that did not resolve to an opinion in the reporter named, in a brief that was filed before any verification step ran. Veritas runs that step. The Filing Risk Scanner extracts each citation, resolves it against reporter and public-record sources, and returns a verdict on each one — located, partial, or not located in reporter — before the brief is signed.

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Filed under · AI sanctions database · CA Illinois (1d)

About this publication

Veritas is a pre-filing citation verification platform for law firms and in-house counsel. Every post on the audit log is written by the Veritas editorial team and cross-checked against the underlying sanctions order, standing order, or published opinion it references. Reporter citations are read in their named volumes. Quotations from court orders are checked against the docket.

The product was built by Andrew Zoll, founder of Veritas, who tracks generative AI sanctions in federal and state courts and turns each documented failure mode into verification logic the scanner runs. Veritas was built after the canonical Mata v. Avianca sanctions order made the verification gap a published failure mode of the bar.

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