Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Wednesday filed a lawsuit alleging Starbucks Coffee Co. has violated a state civil-rights law through race-based hiring and race-based compensation decisions.
“Defendant (Starbucks) has implemented employment policies that favor persons belonging to only certain favored races — in other words, defendant has engaged in discrimination against persons belonging to non-favored races — namely, white, Asian, and multiracial people,” Uthmeier’s office said in the lawsuit filed in Highlands County.
And speaking Wednesday on the social media X, Uthmeier said Starbucks weaponized diversity, equity, and inclusion policies to impose racial quotas.
More: See a copy of the suit here.
"The coffee empire set numerical racial targets for their workforce, and they tied executive bonuses to those targets. That is brazen discrimination, and it is against the law," he said.
Uthmeier's office is looking for current or former Starbucks employees who believe they've faced discrimination.
The lawsuit came after Uthmeier’s office on Nov. 26 said it was dismissing a case against Starbucks that was filed last year at the state Division of Administrative Hearings. In the dismissal, it indicated it would pursue the issue in state or federal court.
Starbucks dispute the allegations in the Division of Administrative Hearings case, saying in a document last month that the state did not “identify any person in Florida who should be awarded the unspecified monetary relief sought by the OAG (Office of the Attorney General), nor does it identify any injury to such person — for example, an adverse employment action against the individual or a comparator to raise an inference that such action was motivated by discrimination.
Instead, the OAG seeks to proceed solely based on speculation that respondent’s (Starbucks’) goals or initiatives theoretically could give rise to discrimination.”
But in the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Uthmeier’s office alleged that for the “past five years and continuing to the present day, defendant has excluded or disfavored nonminorities in numerous employment practices and programs.” Former A-G Ashley Moody filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations last year.
The case was closed after a commission investigation found what it called no reasonable cause to believe the company violated state anti-discrimination law.
The News Service of Florida and WUSF Public Media contributed to this report.
