The US justice department said on Friday it had intervened in a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s xAI challenging a Colorado law aimed at regulating artificial intelligence systems.

In its intervention, the justice department said the law violated the 14th amendment’s equal protection guarantee by requiring companies to guard against unintended discriminatory effects while allowing some discrimination aimed at promoting diversity.

“Laws that require AI companies to infect their products with woke DEI ideology are illegal,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in a statement.

The Colorado attorney general’s office declined to comment. In its lawsuit filed earlier this month in US district court in Colorado, xAI sought to block the state from enforcing Senate bill 24-205, which is scheduled to take effect on 30 June. The law imposes disclosure and risk-mitigation requirements on developers of so-called “high-risk” AI systems used in decisions involving employment, housing, education, healthcare and financial services.

Musk’s artificial intelligence firm said the law violated the first amendment by restricting how developers design AI systems and compelling speech on contentious public issues.

The federal intervention escalates what has been a single-company legal challenge into a direct confrontation between the Trump administration and Colorado over state-level AI regulation. The Trump administration has been pushing for a single legislative framework governing artificial intelligence that can be applied uniformly across the country, rather than leaving states to form their own plans.