Starbucks has a well-deserved reputation for being woke.
Now the Seattle-based coffee chain is in hot water with Florida.
And Ron DeSantis announced an investigation into Starbucks for this awful reason.
Florida investigating Starbucks for using DEI in its hiring
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis served as the guest host on Sean Hannity’s radio show.
He used his appearance to break some major news.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody called into the show, where she announced that the state was investigating Starbucks for its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
“So many of these DEI policies that have been pushed in corporate America that were meant to address and prevent discrimination are now pushing policies and programs and initiatives that may, in fact, be unlawful employment practices, in fact becoming discriminatory themselves, in fact, further dividing racial friction and polarization and society,” Moody said.
DEI policies have taken root in major corporations like Starbucks, which are used to justify reverse discrimination.
Moody said she has lodged a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations for an investigation into Starbucks and its woke hiring practices.
The commission oversees violations of the Florida Civil Rights Act and other civil rights issues.
“We are gonna make sure that in Florida, this ‘quota’ for hiring, and programs that cause every employee to determine whether they are the problem based on the color of their skin – whether that violates Florida’s anti-discrimination law,” Moody said.
“Well, thanks for doing that,” DeSantis said. “This notion that it’s OK to discriminate against some people, not others – you shouldn’t discriminate.”
Starbucks is discriminating based on race in the company’s hiring practices
Starbucks responded to the death of George Floyd in 2020 by going all in on DEI.
The Seattle-based coffee chain said that it wanted to have 30% of its corporate jobs filled by minorities and 40% of its retail and manufacturing workers.
To encourage this to happen, the company tied executive bonuses to hitting DEI goals.
Starbucks also uses woke “anti-bias” and equity training for its employees.
Moody noted in her complaint that hiring based on race is illegal.
“The bottom line is hiring practices using race-based quotas are illegal. 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,” Moody said in a statement.
Moody’s complaint centers on the publicly stated goal of the coffee chain to have minority hiring quotas.
“The Starbucks policies described above appear on their face to be racial quotas. 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,” Moody’s complaint said.
Ron DeSantis had been leading the charge against the DEI.
Now, one of the biggest battles against corporate DEI yet is going down in Florida.