READ THE STATEMENT · HIRING
xAI Sued Colorado Over “Racial Justice.” The Phrase Isn’t in the Law.
(Colorado has since rewritten the law and dropped its duty to prevent AI discrimination. Comments on the new rules are due Oct. 26.)
By Ethan Ward · Oct. 18, 2026
Elon Musk’s xAI sued Colorado on April 9 to stop a 2024 law, SB 24-205. The law would have required companies that use AI to help decide who gets a job, a home, a loan, insurance, or health care to take reasonable care that the AI doesn’t discriminate. xAI argued it would force its chatbot, Grok, to take the state’s side on race. These lines open its complaint.
THE STATEMENT · XAI · APRIL 9, 2026 · COMPLAINT IN U.S. DISTRICT COURT, DENVER
In keeping with that mission, xAI has designed and developed Grok to answer to only evidence and reason, without regard to political correctness, ideological biases, or anything that might distort objective truth. (1. In July 2025, Grok called itself “MechaHitler” in posts on X. xAI deleted them.)
But the State of Colorado now seeks to force xAI to abandon its disinterested pursuit of truth and instead promote the State’s ideological views on various matters, racial justice in particular. (2. The phrase “racial justice” isn’t in the law.)
SB24-205’s purported focus is a prohibition on so-called “algorithmic discrimination.” But SB24-205 is decidedly not an anti-discrimination law. (3. The law defined algorithmic discrimination as AI use that results in “unlawful differential treatment or impact” because of race, color, age, disability, sex, and other protected traits.)
Page 2 of xAI’s complaint against Colorado.
SCREENSHOT: XAI COMPLAINT, U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO, APRIL 9, 2026
Our notes
Grok’s posts in July 2025 included one saying “Hitler would have called it out and crushed it,” Semafor reported. Days earlier, Musk had said Grok was “significantly improved.”
The Justice Department joined xAI’s side on April 24. Its complaint opens, “embedding AI with state-mandated discrimination is a recipe for disaster.”
On April 27, a federal magistrate judge approved an agreement under which Colorado’s attorney general won’t enforce the law, or any replacement passed this year, until 14 days after the court rules on xAI’s request for a preliminary injunction. xAI has 28 days after Colorado’s rules are final to file that request.
On May 14, Colorado enacted SB 26-189, which repealed and replaced the 2024 law. It drops the duty to take reasonable care against algorithmic discrimination and the requirement for impact assessments, EPIC noted. Starting Jan. 1, 2027, it requires notice when an automated system helps make a decision about a job, housing, a loan, insurance, health care, or school, an explanation after a decision goes against you, a way to correct your data, and human review “to the extent commercially reasonable.”
Research shows what the old law was written for. In a 2024 University of Washington test, three AI models ranking résumés favored white-associated names 85% of the time and preferred other candidates over Black men nearly every time, GeekWire reported. In a 2024 Lehigh University study, GPT-4 Turbo would have required Black mortgage applicants to have credit scores about 120 points higher than white applicants to be approved at the same rate.
What you can do
Comment on Colorado’s draft rules for the new law at coag.gov/ai by 11:59 p.m. Mountain Time on Oct. 26. The public hearing is that day at 10 a.m., in Denver and on Zoom.
From Jan. 1, 2027, if an automated system helps a company in Colorado turn you down, ask the company how to correct the data it used and for a human to review the decision.
Anywhere in the U.S., if you think a hiring tool screened you out because of your race, age, sex, or disability, you can file a charge with the EEOC. The deadline is 180 days after the decision, or 300 days in most states with their own anti-discrimination law.
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How we reported this
The statement is from xAI’s complaint in X.AI LLC v. Weiser, filed April 9, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. We also read the Justice Department’s complaint in intervention and the April 27 order in the same case, the texts of SB 24-205 and SB 26-189, the Colorado Department of Law’s rulemaking notice, EPIC’s May 14 analysis, Semafor (July 9, 2025), the University of Washington study as reported by GeekWire (Oct. 31, 2024), Lehigh University’s release on its study (Aug. 20, 2024), and the EEOC’s filing rules, all checked Oct. 18.
Rejected, suspended, or flagged for no reason? Tell me what happened.
The notice rarely says AI. It says “not selected” or “account suspended.” I read every tip myself.
