Ashley Moody, the attorney general of Florida, has demanded that Starbucks Coffee Company be looked into for its allegedly discriminatory hiring practices based on race quotas. In order to look into the business, the Florida AG filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations.
Attorney General Moody claimed that Starbucks’s recruiting policies constituted illegal quotas rather than just aspirational targets.
“The bottom line is hiring practices using race-based quotas are illegal,” Republican Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody stated. “Starbucks has published publicly available policies that raise sufficient concerns that they are using a quota system, and that compensation is tied to that system. The Florida Commission on Human Relations has a duty to investigate these concerns to ensure that Florida civil rights laws are not violated.”
In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the U.S. Supreme Court held that racial discrimination “demeans the dignity and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities.” This ruling is cited in the complaint filed with the FCHR.
The complaint over hiring practices based on race continues, stating that while Students for Fair Admissions addressed government policy, the Supreme Court also considered claims made under federal civil rights laws, which the complaint alleges often apply to private companies.
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Enforcing Florida’s civil rights laws, which are “modeled after and interpreted consistent with federal civil rights laws,” is the responsibility of FCHR.
Starbucks promises that by 2025, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color will be represented in at least 30% of corporate positions and 40% of retail and manufacturing jobs, according to publicly accessible policies. Additional publicly accessible policies state that the salary of Starbucks executives is linked to goals related to diversity and inclusion.
“The Starbucks policies described above appear on their face to be racial quotas,” as per the complaint. “They set specific race-based employment targets. And to the extent Starbucks suggests that these are merely aspirational ‘goals,’ and not quotas, that claim would be hard to square with Starbucks’s decision to tie executive compensation to meeting those targets.”
Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody came under fire from Florida Democrats for what they perceived as a “sham” DEI investigation into Starbucks.
At the very least, according to Florida Attorney General Moody, Starbucks’s publicly accessible regulations provide enough of a risk that the FCHR should look into them to make sure Florida law is being observed.
