David Seligman

The attorney general is the lawyer for the people of Colorado — not for law enforcement agencies. I want to build a collaborative and mutually respectful relationship with law enforcement, but I'll be crystal clear that my responsibility runs to the people and communities of this state, and I'll use every tool of the office to ensure law enforcement actually advances community safety.

First, I'll use the office's pattern or practice authority to hold law enforcement accountable — and I won't limit that to law enforcement alone. That authority was the basis for the AG's consent decree in Aurora — a promising framework, but there's still more work to be done. Unarmed Black men have been killed by Aurora police even since that consent decree came into place, and deep distrust persists. I'll push hard to ensure full enforcement and that the decree doesn't become just paper compliance.

Second, I hear concerns about agencies collaborating with ICE. Colorado has a law prohibiting the sharing of personal information with federal immigration authorities, and multiple sheriffs are openly violating it. As Attorney General, I'll hold those agencies accountable — and I've already been doing exactly that. We served the Garfield County Sheriff with a cease and desist for apparent collaboration with ICE. And when Governor Polis violated Colorado's law against sharing personal information with ICE, we sued him — and won.

Third, I'll create an Independent Litigation Integrity Unit to end the reflexive 'defend at all costs' approach, conducting independent reviews of cases to recommend early resolution or policy reform where that better serves the people of Colorado.

Finally, I'll launch a Surveillance Technologies Strike Force to protect Coloradans from Flock cameras and other surveillance infrastructure that tracks where you drive, what protests you attend, and what church you belong to — feeding data into private AI databases already shared with ICE.

I supported the passage of Colorado's pro-density housing laws, and I'll defend them vigorously as Attorney General. I don't find the legal challenges being brought by municipalities and the Colorado Municipal League compelling — these laws represent a straightforward exercise of state authority to address a housing crisis that is crushing working families. But defending these laws is the floor, not the ceiling.

The housing crisis isn't just about zoning — it's also about a market rigged against working people by corporate power. Governor Polis was right to push hard for these housing laws, but he was very wrong to veto the bill I drafted to prohibit algorithmic rent-setting software. RealPage and tools like it are how corporate landlords collude to jack up rents without ever sitting in the same room — it's price-fixing, plain and simple. As AG, I'll use every available legal tool to go after algorithmic rent-setting, and I'll keep pushing for legislation.

I've already filed one of the first class actions in the country against Greystar — the largest corporate landlord in America — for charging junk fees that deceive renters. As AG, I'll bring big, bold cases challenging consolidation among homebuilders, collusion among homeowners insurers, predatory HOAs, and private equity ownership of housing. Wall Street buying up single-family homes and apartment buildings across Colorado is making the crisis worse, and the AG's office should be leading the charge to stop it.

Fighting Trumpism means more than filing lawsuits against Donald Trump — though I'm not afraid to do that. It means going after the whole ecosystem of corruption and cruelty that surrounds him: suing ICE officers when they trample our rights, going after contractors who do the administration's dirty work, and blocking mergers of corporations that have bribed this administration for a green light.

But it also means holding accountable those who acquiesce to this administration and in doing so break Colorado law. When Trump threatens to cut off funding and universities respond by cutting gender-affirming care for Coloradans — even after courts enjoined those very funding threats — that acquiescence has real victims. Medically necessary care is being denied to Coloradans based on their gender identity. I am deeply concerned that doing so violates Colorado's antidiscrimination law, full stop.

I don't want to start from an adversarial posture — these are often organizations facing real federal pressure, and I'll use every tool available to encourage them and make clear what Colorado law requires. But institutions need to understand that by doing Trump's bidding they don't escape legal risk — they just trade one source of it for another. The Attorney General is the lawyer for the people of Colorado, not for its institutions.

This is one of the core reasons I'm running for Attorney General. I'm deeply concerned about how Big Tech and AI systems are hijacking our democracy, our economy, and our kids' brains — and I've spent years in court doing something about it. We just filed a first-in-the-nation class action against an AI company whose platform secretly generates hidden scores on job applicants and feeds them to employers including Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, and Starbucks — without applicants' knowledge or any chance to correct errors.

There is no AI exemption to our consumer protection laws, our civil rights laws, our competition laws — and as Attorney General I'll enforce them boldly and aggressively. One of the biggest reasons these Big Tech companies operate with impunity is forced arbitration — the fine print that strips people of their right to a court. We've seen cases where children died by suicide after interacting with AI chatbots, and their families got sent to private arbitration. The AG doesn't face that barrier. I'll be the first AG in the country to announce on day one that if you use forced arbitration to strip Coloradans of their rights, you become our top enforcement priority.

I hear you — and it breaks my heart. Because this question is a perfect example of how government has failed people. I've spent my entire career watching a legal system that is supposed to work for everyone get weaponized against the people it was meant to protect. I've had clients sitting in jail not because they did anything wrong but because they're poor and can't afford bail. I had a client who was a DoorDash driver — controlled every minute of his day by an algorithm, told exactly where to go and when — but classified as an independent contractor, so when he got sick he lost his income and lost his home.

But I've also seen what happens when we use the law in bold and courageous ways alongside the movement for a better future. I tell a story about my client Luis, a shift leader at a Carl's Jr. who hadn't been to a parent-teacher conference in years because his boss kept changing his schedule. We brought the first case in the country challenging those fine-print non-compete traps under the antitrust laws. As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of workers were freed and franchise worker wages in many parts of the country went up by 6%. That's what it means when the law works for people. This office can help build the world we deserve — if we're willing to use the law in bold and creative ways.