It is not yet public whether HHS has responded to the ruling. The decision's language on AI is expressly tentative, so the source of the errors remains unestablished. The brief also follows earlier HHS citation problems. In 2025, reporters found at least seven cited sources in the "Make America Healthy Again" report could not be located. HHS later said "minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected," while the White House called the errors "formatting issues." A federal judge separately criticized HHS in a teen pregnancy prevention case for citing public health studies that appear either not to exist or not to support the propositions they were cited for.
Attorneys should note that this is a formal agency decision, not a court sanctions order, which makes it an official record in the growing pattern of citation errors in federal filings. The comparison to Mata v. Avianca, which involved six fake cases, is already being drawn, and this brief's error count is far larger. Practitioners should verify every citation in agency and federal filings before submission, including page numbers, case numbers, and whether authority addresses the proposition cited. Watch for any HHS response and for whether the FLRA or other agencies adopt specific rules on AI use in briefs.