Missouri AG sues Starbucks, says workforce is 'more female and less white'
Starbucks employs about 211,000 people in the United States. (Photo by Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)
Missouri’s attorney general has sued Starbucks, accusing it of engaging in discrimination with its diversity, equity and inclusion policies and alleging that such initiatives have made the coffee giant’s workforce “more female and less white.”
The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by Andrew Bailey, a Republican, accuses Starbucks of engaging in “systemic racial, sexual, and sexual orientation discrimination” through hiring quotas, advancement opportunities and board membership.
Such practices force Missouri consumers to “pay higher prices and wait longer for goods and services,” he argued, because making hiring decisions “on non-merit considerations will skew the hiring pool towards people who are less qualified to perform their work.” He did not provide evidence for how costs would increase for consumers.
In a statement to news outlets, the Seattle-based chain disputed the allegations as “inaccurate.”
“Our programs and benefits are open to everyone and lawful,” it said. “Our hiring practices are inclusive, fair and competitive and designed to ensure the strongest candidate for every job every time.”
The federal lawsuit comes as corporations across the country are rolling back their diversity, equity and inclusion programs as the Trump administration moves to shut down all federal DEI programs.
President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders targeting federal DEI initiatives, including one that reversed a landmark executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson that directed federal contractors to take “affirmative action” to end discrimination at their firms.
Starbucks employs about 211,000 people in the United States and operates about 200 locations in Missouri.
As of August 2020, the company’s U.S. workforce was 69.2% female and 30.8% male, according to the company. It was 46.5% Black, Indigenous, people of color or unspecified, and 53.5% White. As of September 2024, the workforce was 70.9% women and 28.4% men, and 47.8% White.
Citing the same statistics, Bailey said in the lawsuit: “In other words, since 2020, Starbuck’s workface has become more female and less white.”
Starbucks began rolling out a number of diversity and sensitivity programs in 2018, after the high-profile arrest of two African American men at a Philadelphia store. The company closed 8,000 U.S. stores for a day for employees to undergo racial-bias training.
After George Floyd’s murder prompted a racial justice movement in 2020, the company made a commitment to have people of color in least 30% of all corporate jobs and at least 40% of all retail and manufacturing roles by 2025. The company also committed to having female representation in at least 55% of all retail roles, 50% of all corporate roles and 30% of all manufacturing roles within that same time frame.
In October 2020, Starbucks announced that it would link executive bonus compensation to “success in achieving the Company’s Environmental Social Governance (ESG) goals” as an effort to hold senior leadership more accountable for inclusion and sustainability—moves that the lawsuit called discriminatory.
Goldman Sachs, Google, Amazon, Meta, Walmart and McDonald’s are among the latest major U.S. companies to have scaled back on DEI programs in recent months. Many of these changes had been underway since the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling to overturn affirmative action in university admissions, also cited by Bailey in his lawsuit. Trump has also directed federal agencies to draw up lists of public companies to investigate over their DEI policies.
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