EXCLUSIVE: Complaint Says Undercover Videos Show Utah Schools ‘Rebranded’ DEI To Evade Ban

Two Utah universities have been hit with federal complaints after several administrators were caught on video claiming that their schools still practice diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) cited recent videos released by Accuracy In Media (AIM) showing officials at the University of Utah and Utah Tech University (UTU) telling undercover reports that their institutions simply changed how they market and organize their DEI structures rather than completely dismantling them, despite state law and federal directives. The complaints, shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation, ask the Department of Education, Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “promptly investigate the university’s potential violations.”

“Due to the nature of the evidence, we believe these actions extend far beyond a few employees and may be orchestrated, endorsed, or sanctioned by higher-ranking officials within this institution,” the complaints read.

University of Utah education coordinator Lucas Alvarez told an undercover AIM reporter the situation is “complicated.”

“I mean, like, the programs that we’re doing, I think technically we’re still allowed to do them but they have to be marketed a certain way,” Alvarez said in the video, citing “academic freedom.”

However, the university’s Center for Community and Cultural Engagement director, LeiLoni McLaughlin, told AIM that “every university has had to shift” and Alvarez’s characterization was false.

Rebecca Walsh, communications director for the University of Utah, told the DCNF Alvarez is “not a spokesperson for the University of Utah” and that “his comments do not reflect the position of the institution.”

“I reject the assertion that the university is hiding diversity work with rebranding and remarketing,” Walsh told the DCNF. “The changes required under HB 261 transformed how we support student success, recruit faculty, celebrate events and create a sense of belonging on our campus.”

Walsh pointed to news that some student groups focused on gender and racial identities have now been forced to fill the gaps left behind by the supposedly dissolved campus centers.

At UTU, Student Resource Center director Drusilla Bottoms told an undercover AIM investigator the university gets away with continuing to use DEI by labeling it “academic.” (RELATED: ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’: Ohio Schools Caught Saying They’d Conceal Trans Students’ Sex, Complaint Alleges)

“Its under academic. It’s not under services at all. It’s all academic,” Bottoms said. “I think its the Institute of Race, Gender, Inequality, or something like that–but it’s all academic, so it has nothing to do with student services because they can function on the academic side without any restrictions because it’s under the education umbrella.”

“What they did is they dissolved our Center for Inclusion and Belonging, but we just kind of reorganized it,” Bottoms continued. “We didn’t really get rid of anything.”

Bottoms also admitted the school did not fire any of its DEI staff.

“We just do it a little differently,” Bottoms stated.

UTU did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

In January 2024, Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a law prohibiting educational institutions from “engaging in discriminatory practices” such as providing preferential treatment to certain groups of people based on “personal identity characteristics.”

President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order solidified this ban, saying such programs and policies “not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. ”

“The fact that this malevolent behavior is occurring in Utah of all places just shows how entrenched these discriminatory policies are within the education system, not just at every level but everywhere,” Michael Chamberlain, director of PPT, told the DCNF. “It doesn’t seem to matter what actions, laws, or decisions come from state and federal lawmakers, governors, the President, the courts, even the Supreme Court; education leadership appears utterly intransigent and unwilling to reassess. Instead, they choose to try to hide what they are doing from the public. Parents have to be asking where they can send their kids to get away from such discriminatory and destructive ideologies.”

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