Outside review details discrimination complaint against a Utah Democrat

The Utah Senate released findings of a harassment and discrimination inquiry Friday that the chamber’s Democrats are pointing to as they call on Sen. Kathleen Riebe to resign. 

Among the most notable findings: the attorney who investigated a legislative employee’s September complaint against Riebe, a Democrat from Cottonwood Heights, reported that the senator acknowledged telling staffers that she did not want gay interns “who were coming out of the closet.” 

The report, released Friday, outlines the alleged admission and wide-ranging charges of bias based on sexual orientation, race and religion against Riebe, who has served for seven years in the Legislature. 

The inquiry found it’s more likely than not that the way Riebe treated the staffer was motivated at least in part by race, national origin or ethnicity, and that she violated the Legislature’s internal antidiscrimination policy. The review does not name the staffer or her job title. It identifies her as an immigrant who is not white. 

The 19-page report — obtained by Utah News Dispatch through a public record request — was redacted throughout to conceal most names, along with roughly a dozen paragraphs. In one instance, a full section is blocked. The obscured portions render some of the allegations and findings unclear.  

Also on Friday, the Senate made public a letter from Senate President Stuart Adams detailing the four corrective actions imposed on Riebe in connection with the review, but each is blacked out. 

The public release of the documents comes two days after the senator said broadly she disputes the allegations and would not step down. Fellow Democratic senators, citing the results of the inquiry, have called on her to resign. 

They announced less than an hour before polls closed on Election Day that they had voted to remove Riebe from their caucus. The news cast a shadow on an otherwise celebratory night for Utah Democrats, who will send a candidate to the U.S. House for the first time in six years and flipped more state legislative seats than anticipated in what supporters are cheering as a “blue tsunami.”

Riebe and her attorney Greg Skordas did not immediately return emails seeking comment Friday afternoon on the investigation and the original complaint alleging “a sustained course of disparaging, intimidating, and belittling treatment.

Additionally, the employee reported Riebe has said “it is not fair to invest money for people here illegally” and questioned the immigration status of some people. She also alleged the senator questioned in a meeting why Utah’s dual-immersion programs would teach a specific language — the employee’s first language, which was redacted — and asking who “even speaks” it.

The employee said Riebe’s complaints about other senators were mostly directed to women of color.   

Sen. Riebe resists calls to resign over harassment, discrimination allegation

Another witness reported Riebe “blamed the presidential election on the trans and LGBTQAI+ community, saying words to the effect of ‘what these people have done to the party,’ and that ‘immigrant issues’ and ‘queer issues’ cost the Democratic Party the election.” The same witness said Riebe favors white people who are not “Mormon,” a term for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LGBTQ+. 

In an interview with the investigating attorney, Paul Smith of Parsons Behle & Latimer, Riebe said she would never take money away from immigrants and denied blaming the 2024 presidential election on the LGBTQ+ community or immigrants. 

A description of the employee’s complaint states it relays how Riebe called her “fat” and “huge” while she was pregnant and asked how she affords her clothes. 

In the investigation, Riebe denied asking how the employee could afford her clothes, but said the employee has an “amazing wardrobe” and recalled seeing her footwear one time and asking, “you have $2,000 pair of shoes?” 

Riebe said she didn’t say anything else on the topic and denied making comments about the staffer’s body during her pregnancy.

A week after the legislative employee filed a complaint, Riebe lodged her own complaint, the report states, alleging the employee’s account of harassment and discrimination was actually retaliation. 

During the inquiry, Riebe said the staffer “engaged in impermissible partisan activity” by working on another senator’s campaign, and alleged the employee’s close relationship with that senator “created a detrimental ‘allegiance,’” the investigator wrote. 

Riebe had told someone that she’d received a screenshot image showing the employee was running another senator’s campaign, the report states, and believed the employee’s subsequent report was retribution. The staffer explained she had not accepted an offer for a position with the campaign, while witnesses said they told Riebe no formal campaign had been established. 

Riebe, an educator, was first elected to the state Senate in 2018 after serving on the Utah State Board of Education. Earlier this year, she ran to represent Utah’s newly drawn 1st Congressional District before dropping out to endorse Ben McAdams. Her current Senate term runs through Jan. 1, 2029.