By Daniel Wiessner
Feb 5 (Reuters) – A federal judge in Missouri dismissed a lawsuit on Thursday by the Republican-led state accusing Starbucks of using its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion as a pretext to systematically discriminate based on race, gender and sexual orientation.
U.S. District Judge John Ross in St. Louis said the state’s case failed to prove that Starbucks actually discriminated against “even a single Missouri resident” who worked at Starbucks or applied for a job there.
Ross was appointed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
The office of Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, alleged that Starbucks had unlawfully tied executive pay to the company’s achieving racial and gender-based hiring quotas. The lawsuit was filed by Hanaway’s predecessor, Andrew Bailey, before he joined the Trump administration as co-deputy director of the FBI.
Stephanie Whitaker, director of communications for the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, said on Friday that the state would continue to press its case against companies whose race- and sex-based hiring practices violate Missouri law.
The lawsuit also accused Starbucks of singling out preferred groups for additional training and job advancement prospects, and employing a quota system to ensure that its own board of directors had a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Starbucks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump, also a Republican, has tried to shut down policies promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal government, schools and the private sector. Companies including Goldman Sachs, Google, Amazon.com, and Target have publicly scrapped programs, though some have maintained efforts behind the scenes.
Missouri’s lawsuit challenged Starbucks’ policies adopted in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer triggered unrest nationwide and led many companies to rethink employment practices.
Starbucks employs more than 200,000 people in the U.S. and 360,000 people worldwide.
In 2023, a federal judge in Spokane, Washington, dismissed a shareholder lawsuit challenging Starbucks’ diversity policies, saying the case addressed public policy questions best decided by lawmakers and companies, not courts.
Missouri’s lawsuit sought to force Starbucks to end alleged discrimination based on race, gender and national origin, rehire and rescind discipline against employees affected by discrimination, and pay unspecified damages.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York and Dietrich Knauth in New York, New York; Editing by Sonali Paul)
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