D. Kan.: U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, Standing Order 26-01: Use of Art…

What the order requires

Chief U.S. District Judge John W. Broomes signed Standing Order 26-01 on January 28, 2026. The order treats AI use as a verification problem, not a disclosure problem: it does not impose a default disclosure block on every filing but reserves the court’s authority to require one in any case. The verification duty is broader than citation-checking: it reaches “quotations, paraphrased assertions, legal analysis, factual and procedural backgrounds, and the like.”

1. Personal responsibility for content. “Litigants are responsible for the content of their own filings and for complying with all applicable procedural rules and duties of candor even when they use AI to generate all or portions of court filings.”
2. Comprehensive verification scope. Reviewing and verifying “all content filed with this court that was drafted or assisted by an AI tool” includes “citations to legal authority, quotations, paraphrased assertions, legal analysis, factual and procedural backgrounds, and the like.”
3. No mandatory disclosure block. The order does not require attorneys to flag AI use on the face of every filing. It reserves the court’s “broad discretion to require a party in any case to include a sworn statement” with four named components: (a) the extent of AI use, (b) the tool used, (c) which portion of the filing is AI-generated, and (d) certification of personal verification of each cited authority.
4. Sua sponte strike authority. The court may strike a noncompliant filing on its own motion, “with or without prejudice to refiling.”
5. Escalating sanctions toolkit. Monetary sanctions, disciplinary referrals, disqualification of counsel, filing restrictions, or dismissal of a party’s case.
6. Pro se reach. The order applies expressly to “all lawyers and parties, including pro se litigants.”

Context

D. Kan. Standing Order 26-01 was issued five days before Judge Julie A. Robinson ruled on sanctions in Lexos Media IP, LLC v. Overstock.com, Inc., No. 2:22-cv-02324 (D. Kan. Feb. 2, 2026), Doc. 218, over summary-judgment and Daubert filings containing defective citations created with generative AI. The court found that all five Lexos attorneys violated Rule 11(b) and publicly admonished them. It fined four of them a combined $12,000 and released the fifth from further sanctions, revoked the pro hac vice admission of the attorney who had used ChatGPT, and fined local counsel who had signed the filings. The standing order and the Lexos sanctions read together: 26-01 makes the personal verification duty explicit, and Lexos shows the court sanctioning every signer, local counsel included.

The court announced Standing Order 26-01 in a notice dated January 28, 2026, which also proposed amendments to Local Rules 5.1(a), 6.1(c), 65.2(b), and 67.1, with comments due February 28, 2026. The court then adopted revised Rules of Practice by an Order of Adoption dated April 1, 2026, signed by Chief Judge Broomes and effective the same day. The rules as adopted contain no provision on artificial intelligence, so the AI duties remain in Standing Order 26-01, which the court still lists among its standing orders as of September 2026.

Practitioner workflow

For D. Kan. matters, no standard AI disclosure block is required, but every cited authority, quoted passage, and paraphrased proposition that originated in or was assisted by an AI tool must be independently verified before signing. Firms should expect the court to require a sworn AI-disclosure statement in any case where the court has reason to suspect AI-assisted filings are being submitted without verification. A workable internal protocol: a per-filing checklist documenting the AI tool used, the portions of the document touched by AI, the verification step performed for each cited authority, and the responsible attorney sign-off. This record is the firm’s evidence of compliance if the court imposes the sworn-statement requirement.

Scope

District of Kansas federal court only. Applies to all lawyers and parties, including pro se litigants.

State counterpart

For state filings in Shawnee County (Kansas’s Third Judicial District), see Shawnee County District Court Rule 3.125, which requires a first-page AI disclosure and accuracy certification on every AI-assisted filing.

Primary source

Standing Order 26-01 (PDF): https://www.ksd.uscourts.gov/sites/ksd/files/Standing%20Order%2026-01%20Use%20of%20AI.pdf