diff --git a/dask_cuda/tests/test_explicit_comms.py b/dask_cuda/tests/test_explicit_comms.py
index 749c82b6..281a930e 100644
--- a/dask_cuda/tests/test_explicit_comms.py
+++ b/dask_cuda/tests/test_explicit_comms.py
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
 import dask
 from dask import dataframe as dd
 from dask.dataframe.shuffle import partitioning_index
+from dask.dataframe.utils import assert_eq
 from distributed import Client, get_worker
 from distributed.deploy.local import LocalCluster
 
@@ -97,12 +98,8 @@ def check_partitions(df, npartitions):
 def _test_dataframe_shuffle(backend, protocol, n_workers):
     if backend == "cudf":
         cudf = pytest.importorskip("cudf")
-        from cudf.testing._utils import assert_eq
-
         initialize(enable_tcp_over_ucx=True)
     else:
-        from dask.dataframe.utils import assert_eq
-
         dask.config.update(
             dask.config.global_config,
             {"distributed.comm.ucx": get_ucx_config(enable_tcp_over_ucx=True),},
@@ -144,10 +141,7 @@ def _test_dataframe_shuffle(backend, protocol, n_workers):
                     # Check the values of `ddf` (ignoring the row order)
                     expected = df.sort_values("key")
                     got = ddf.compute().sort_values("key")
-                    if backend == "cudf":
-                        assert_eq(got, expected)
-                    else:
-                        pd.testing.assert_frame_equal(got, expected)
+                    assert_eq(got, expected)
 
 
 @pytest.mark.parametrize("nworkers", [1, 2, 3])
@@ -202,11 +196,9 @@ def test_dask_use_explicit_comms():
 def _test_dataframe_shuffle_merge(backend, protocol, n_workers):
     if backend == "cudf":
         cudf = pytest.importorskip("cudf")
-        from cudf.testing._utils import assert_eq
 
         initialize(enable_tcp_over_ucx=True)
     else:
-        from dask.dataframe.utils import assert_eq
 
         dask.config.update(
             dask.config.global_config,
@@ -243,10 +235,7 @@ def _test_dataframe_shuffle_merge(backend, protocol, n_workers):
             )
             with dask.config.set(explicit_comms=True):
                 got = ddf1.merge(ddf2, on="key").set_index("key").compute()
-            if backend == "cudf":
-                assert_eq(got, expected)
-            else:
-                pd.testing.assert_frame_equal(got, expected)
+            assert_eq(got, expected)
 
 
 @pytest.mark.parametrize("nworkers", [1, 2, 4])
@@ -265,7 +254,6 @@ def test_dataframe_shuffle_merge(backend, protocol, nworkers):
 
 def _test_jit_unspill(protocol):
     import cudf
-    from cudf.testing._utils import assert_eq
 
     with dask_cuda.LocalCUDACluster(
         protocol=protocol,