Dates not being validated

I have a form with a modal and one of the fields in the form is a date field. It is cast in the Model as:

'date_last_contact' => 'date:m/d/Y',

In the $rules section of the livewire file it is set as:

'editing.date_last_contact' => 'date|nullable',

The issue is if I put a non-date non-null value in field and try to save it throws an error because it is not validating…

Carbon\Exceptions\InvalidFormatException
Could not parse ‘adff’: DateTime::__construct(): Failed to parse time string (adff) at position 0 (a): The timezone could not be found in the database

The Save function in the livewire file looks like this:

public function save()
    {   
        $this->validate();
        $this->editing->save();
        $this->showEditModal = false;
    }

What it seems is happening it is trying to CAST it to a date before the validation is happening. How can this be prevented?

Laravel Version: 8.24.0
Livewire Version: 2.3.8

Can anyone confirm that the CAST happens before the validation is done? This might help me narrow down my issue. Thanks!