Texas (89th Judicial District: Wichita County): Standing Order Regarding Use of Artificia…

No longer in force

This order has been superseded. On July 8, 2026, the 30th, 78th and 89th District Courts signed a joint Standing Order Regarding Use of Artificial Intelligence that applies to “every pending, or hereafter filed, case in the District Courts of Wichita County, Texas.” The joint order keeps the same structure: a per-pleading certification that AI-contributed content was verified through traditional legal sources, and a ban on AI use and recording in the courtroom and court offices. Judge Barnard no longer presides over the 89th District Court; Judge Dobie Kosub, the current judge, signed the joint order. What follows describes the 2024 order as issued.

What the order required

Judge Charles Barnard of the 89th District Court of Wichita County signed this standing order on March 27, 2024. It applied to every pending or hereafter filed case in the 89th District Court of Wichita County, Texas.

The order had two operative parts. First, attorneys and self-represented litigants who used “any form of artificial intelligence for legal research or drafting in connection with a case” had to sign and submit a certification form “as an attachment to each pleading generated utilizing artificial intelligence,” certifying that content created or contributed to by generative AI was verified “through traditional (non-AI) legal sources” before submission.

Second, the order barred AI use in the courtroom and court offices. AI could not be used “to record, listen to, or transcribe any activity in the courtroom, or court office,” and anyone entering the courtroom or court offices was prohibited from recording activities, conversations, or other events occurring there. That courtroom ban is not a restriction on using AI to prepare filings, so this entry does not flag the order as prohibiting AI use.

Scope

The order bound attorneys and self-represented litigants in matters before the 89th District Court of Wichita County, Texas. It was one of three substantively identical Wichita County standing orders signed within days of each other (with the 30th District (McKnight) and 78th District (Kennedy)), collected as a single PDF on the Texas Local Rules portal (file 1866).

Posting on the OCA local-rules site

Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 3a(c) provides: “To be effective, local rules, forms, and standing orders must be published on the Office of Court Administration’s website.” This order is posted on the Office of Court Administration’s local-rules site (TOPICs). As of September 30, 2026, the July 2026 joint order that superseded this order was not posted there for the 89th District Court. This page reports these facts without drawing a conclusion about the order’s effectiveness.

Primary source

2024 standing order PDF (multi-judge document covering the 30th, 78th, and 89th Districts): https://topics.txcourts.gov/LocalRulesPublic/PreviewAttachment/1866

Joint order that superseded it (Wichita County download page): https://wichitacountytx.com/download/standing-order-regarding-use-of-artificial-intelligence-3/