A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Missouri’s attorney general challenging Starbucks’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
John A. Ross, the U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Missouri and an appointee of former President Obama, dismissed the lawsuit because Missouri failed to provide specific evidence that Starbucks’s DEI practices did “actual, concrete, and particularized injuries” to “even a single Missouri resident.”
“The Court cannot reasonably draw the inference that any of them have been harmed simply because of Defendant’s alleged DEI policies, as Plaintiff leaves to the imagination the actual enforcement and implementation of these policies,” Ross stated in the lawsuit dismissal.
In October 2020, Starbucks announced initiatives to “advance racial and social equity” across the popular coffee chain — one of many companies to make similar moves after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a police officer in Minneapolis sparked widespread demonstrations across the country that summer.
Andrew Bailey, Missouri’s attorney general at the time, argued in the lawsuit the DEI efforts gave an unfair advantage to some Missouri residents when it came to hiring and workplace treatment, based on characteristics like race, gender and sexual orientation.
