Caught between two governments: Whistleblower says Colorado’s DEI system collides with a federal ban

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

When managers in the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) logged into their Nov. 6 virtual meeting, the agenda read like a standard operational update. But on the list sat two items that created angst: the statewide EDI/Colorado for All report due in December and the launch of a 2026 Inclusive Leadership cohort. 

Those initiatives, part of Colorado’s expanding equity and inclusion system, set the stage for a clash with a different set of requirements now coming from D.C.

The moment in the meeting

Rich Guggenheim, the program manager who oversees plant certification inspections for Colorado’s nursery and seed industries, signs off on several USDA pest survey grants. When Inclusive Leadership came up, he typed a short assessment into the chat.

“DEI on steroids.”

Division Director Wondirad Gebru stopped the meeting and labeled the comment inappropriate. Guggenheim pushed back, and Gebru responded on camera, “Good, it’s on record that you don’t care,” before ordering him to mute his mic. Guggenheim said the way it unfolded left little doubt about the intent behind it. “All of these program managers saw my boss retaliate against me in real time for bringing up my concerns and silencing me,” he said. “He absolutely meant it to be humiliating.”

Guggenheim also sent Gebru a private message during the meeting, signaling that he had already raised the issue with federal authorities and would not retreat simply because his comment was unwelcome. He said the exchange captured the deeper rift over how far the department could go in enforcing its DEI agenda.

Earlier that month, employees discussed threats to staff safety. A colleague described having a gun pulled on her during an inspection and questioned whether the department took field risks seriously. 

The reaction from leadership was telling. “Hollis Glenn was literally checking his watch while she was talking,” Guggenheim said. The employee resigned a week later because she felt unsupported in that environment.

Guggenheim said the moment revealed an irony at the heart of the department’s culture: the same system that demands inclusion across identity categories neglected to offer guidance and  minimized a direct threat to an employee’s life—while elevating a policy agenda off-limits for federal agencies and their grantees.

Inside Colorado’s EDI mandate

Across Colorado’s executive agencies, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) is more than a training module—it is a statewide system embedded in leadership development, onboarding, coaching, performance discussions and hiring practices. 

The Governor’s Office of Information Technology’s FY26 EDI plan describes Inclusive Leadership micro-learnings, rotating coaching topics, cultural humility sessions, allyship workshops and demographic-based employee groups—all positioned as recurring parts of agency culture.

It defines EDI as creating “an even playing field for everyone” and lists “Systemic Change” among its core principles, illustrating how deeply equity work has been woven into statewide strategy.

State job announcements reinforce the structure. Multiple CDA postings state that “equity, diversity, and inclusion” drive state success, signaling that EDI is now a hiring expectation.

For Guggenheim, those frameworks weren’t neutral. Required to participate in them after prior discipline, he said the training content crossed ideological lines.

“It’s insulting and it’s offensive as a gay man to constantly be told in these trainings that you’re supposed to be a victim, marginalized, oppressed, and you’re being used as a political football. I’m not gonna play into that.”

He said that in 2024 he had been placed on a performance plan that required DEI and Inclusive Leadership courses after making a personal X post about “a man in a dress in a woman’s bathroom at work” and writing that he “wouldn’t feel comfortable hiring a trans person because of this.”

Guggenheim described the disciplinary training as “reeducation” and “indoctrination into gender ideology, race white guilt… classic postmodern Marxist ideology.” He argued that the department’s approach did more than mandate training. It blurred legal protections. As he put it, when gender identity overrides biological sex, “you can’t protect what you can’t define,” a shift he believes undermines the very rights DEI claims to uphold.

A federal prohibition on DEI

Colorado’s DEI expansion runs parallel to a sweeping federal prohibition. President Trump’s Executive Order 14151, issued in January, directs federal agencies and grantees to eliminate all DEI programs “under whatever name they appear,” explicitly forbidding the relabeling or embedding of DEI content in other training formats. 

A March 21 memorandum from the Department of Justice further explains that DEI-based programming violates Title VII and Equal Protection, and that the federal government may not induce contractors or grantees to adopt discriminatory practices.

Those prohibitions matter at CDA, where Guggenheim signs federal agreements and oversees compliance.

Grant reporting and the DEI question

In a USDA-funded Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey report from September, the training section listed Equity and Diversity and Inclusive Leadership alongside pest survey workshops and technical trainings. 

That inclusion put DEI programs inside federal grant activity, which current federal directives do not permit.

“I’m a signatory on several federal grants,” Guggenheim shared. “So I have a fiduciary responsibility to raise these concerns. And when the state of Colorado continues to push DEI in violation of President Trump’s executive orders, we are now in breach of federal law and in breach of contract—a contract that has my name on it.”

The day everything turned

On Nov. 6, Dec. 5, Guggenheim sent the Attorney General a detailed letter requesting an investigation into CDA’s DEI programs. And on Dec. 6, he followed up with Bondi’s office, sharing supplemental information, including CDA’s use of Inclusive Leadership training and the presence of DEI activities in federal grant reports. 

Within hours of submitting that letter, CDA’s human resources director informed him he was the subject of a workplace investigation. The notice did not identify the alleged violation.

Guggenheim said the timing wasn’t accidental. “They waited twenty-nine days after the meeting, and the same day I notified the Attorney General, they launched an investigation into me,” he said. He said an unnamed allegation makes due process meaningless because there’s nothing to answer or refute. In the materials he filed, he argued that this kind of tactic sends a warning to anyone who might question whether the department is following the law.

In written complaints to the State Personnel Board, the Civil Rights Division and Attorney General Pam Bondi, he described the investigation as retaliation designed to punish him for questioning whether CDA was violating the federal DEI ban. He said the message to employees was clear: speaking up about unlawful practices would be met not with clarification, but with consequence.

On December 8, the State Personnel Board formally opened a whistleblower case, docketed as 2026G044, and issued an order requiring the Department of Agriculture to respond to Guggenheim’s allegations in detail. 

The order states that a “blank categorical denial” will be considered inadequate and directs the agency to address each allegation, including the timing of the investigation, the November 6 exchange and the use of DEI and Inclusive Leadership programming within federal grant reporting.

Guggenheim’s filing outlines a series of material claims the agency must now address, including that the November 6 exchange constituted viewpoint discrimination, that the December 5 investigation was retaliatory, and that CDA’s use of Inclusive Leadership and EDI programming violates federal law prohibiting DEI training for federal grantees. 

His complaint further alleges misuse of CAPS funds, compelled ideological speech, discrimination against women and LGB employees, selective policy enforcement and false assurances of civil-rights compliance.

At the same time, the Board referred Guggenheim’s discrimination and retaliation claims to the Colorado Civil Rights Division for investigation, triggering a second track of review under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. 

What began as a workplace dispute has now reached two state agencies and several federal offices. He has a whistleblower case before the State Personnel Board, a discrimination complaint with the Civil Rights Division, and filings with the Department of Justice and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

A conflict of authorities

Federal law now prohibits DEI programming for agencies and the grantees they fund. Colorado continues to require EDI plans, Inclusive Leadership programming and identity-based frameworks across its agencies. 

Inside CDA, those competing directives collided in a video meeting where a program manager pointed out what he believed was a breach of federal law. The result became a whistleblower case, a workplace investigation and a challenge that could carry consequences for how Colorado state government interacts with federal grants.

As Guggenheim sees it, the problem is twofold—a DEI ideology he believes has distorted workplace culture for years, and the federal funding obligations he says the department can’t ignore. His case now spans administrative, civil-rights and federal whistleblower channels, a reach that reflects the depth of the conflict more than any single filing could.

He said the federal shift matters because, until recently, employees had no real way to push back.

“The problem is before President Trump took office, you really could not speak out about it. You had to kind of just silently go along with it or literally risk losing your livelihood and being targeted by HR and by the state of Colorado. And if you do file a complaint… they’re gonna shut you up, they’re gonna get rid of you, they’re gonna show you hostility, they’re gonna retaliate. But now that we have President Trump, that has shifted the rules of the game where people are able to come out and speak out. And if the state does decide to retaliate, we already know that the Trump administration and federal laws are gonna protect us.”

“If we’re gonna take federal dollars—we gotta abide by the requirements.”

He said the point wasn’t a payout. “I’m not asking for huge sums of money. I’m not asking for any notoriety. I’m asking for the state to comply.”

He said he’s seen what happens when people keep quiet, and it never makes the problem smaller.

“Do not be afraid to blow the whistle. You are protected.”

For Guggenheim, the measure of any workplace culture is whether people are free to voice difficult truths.

“When people feel like they can say that something egregious is happening and not be silenced, and not be retaliated against… that is when Colorado becomes a Colorado for all.”