Were you unhappy with your last cup of coffee at Starbucks? Was it made poorly? Did it cost too much?
If so, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is here to tell you why: Too many Blacks, women and gays are behind Starbucks’ counters these days and, obviously, they’re screwing things up. To ensure you get that venti cappuccino with the extra shot of espresso made right, Bailey is suing to force the hiring of a more straight white male (read: competent) barista corps.
That’s the essence of a race-baiting lawsuit Bailey filed Tuesday against Starbucks — that and an utterly unsupported claim of employment discrimination against said straight white males.
People are also reading…
It was one day after filing that suit that Bailey sat before skeptical state legislators telling them, straight faced, that he’s understaffed and he needs more lawyers. Their skepticism is warranted. Maybe Bailey would have enough lawyers to go around if he wasn’t wasting resources on this kind of toxic culture-war performance litigation.
The Bailey filed in the Eastern District of Missouri federal court is objectively ridiculous but not especially surprising to anyone familiar with his short political history. Originally appointed to fill a vacancy in the attorney general’s office, he won a full term Nov. 5 after abusing his authority to an unprecedented extent with frivolous, ideologically charged lawsuits pandering to the MAGA right. We have documented them extensively in a collection of editorials we’ve dubbed The Bailey Tally, available on .
The new Starbucks suit is of a piece with the Trump administration’s gleeful persecution of anything that smacks racial or gender tolerance — a campaign that has cynically cast the well-meaning if sometimes misapplied concept of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) into something sinister.
Bailey’s suit claims in part that Starbucks’ efforts to expand the diversity of its workforce violates U.S. Supreme Court precedent set with a 2023 case in which the court struck down the practice of considering race as a factor for admission to Harvard. Bailey argues that that prohibition also must apply to hiring practices of private companies.
Others, including the American Bar Association, disagree with that interpretation. But the problems with Bailey’s argument are more fundamental.
His evidence that Starbucks has discriminated against straight white males is based primarily on data from the company showing that in fact its ratio of female and minority workers has risen in recent years. Bailey presents as an allegation that Starbucks seeks to “have its ‘inclusion and diversity reflect the myriad populations [it] serves ... and society at large.’â€
Consider the context here: Right-wing culture warriors like Bailey are always insistent that government keep its nose out of private enterprise and let businesses make their own decisions for business-driven reasons — unless, of course, a company concludes that it’s good for business to promote racial and gender diversity. Then the Baileys of the world go marching into court on behalf of the apparently downtrodden demographic of straight white males.
An especially gratuitous passage in Bailey’s suit notes the company’s use of the word “Latinx†in its written material: “‘Latinx’,†says Bailey’s suit, “is a term used by DEI activists in place of ‘Latino’ or ‘Latina’ because they do not like that the Spanish language builds gender into its grammar.â€
What exactly is the legal argument in that digression? What, indeed, is even the point, beyond a socio-political jab? Why should every taxpayer in Missouri help fund this kind of ideological trolling in court documents?
Then there’s the suit’s contention that any focus by Starbucks on expanding diversity in its workforce “will skew the hiring pool towards people who are less qualified to perform their work, increasing costs for Missouri’s consumers.â€
You’d think such an explosive allegation — Straight white males are being denied jobs at Starbucks and the result is an incompetent workforce! — would be accompanied by some kind of evidence of this alleged discrimination and incompetence.
You would be wrong. We have scoured each of this lawsuit’s 59 pages and here’s what we »å¾±»å²Ô’t find: A single, solitary reference to a single, solitary actual person who claims to have been denied employment or advancement at Starbucks due to the putative societal disadvantage of being a straight white male.
We also »å¾±»å²Ô’t find a single, solitary complaint from a single, solitary Starbucks customer about substandard service caused by having too many women and minorities behind the counter. Nor did we find a single, solitary piece of data supporting the stunningly malicious assumption that female or gay baristas are naturally going to screw up your coffee order, or that Black or Hispanic baristas are somehow going to make it cost more.
In light of this latest political abuse of his office (and of the court system), Bailey’s plea Wednesday to the Missouri House Budget Committee for $2 million in additional funding next year for 28 new staff was especially galling.
As the Post-Dispatch’s Kurt Erickson reports, state Rep. Raychel Proudie, D-Ferguson, referenced the suit during committee discussion: “I’m curious if white-served coffee tastes better.†Maybe Bailey can amend his filing to answer that brewing question.
