After supporting Seattle’s Gay Pride Parade, sponsoring
numerous events for gay-rights groups, and stirring up controversy
in 2005 by printing a quote from gay novelist Armistead Maupin on its cups, Starbucks is being sued by two former
employees who say they were discriminated against while working for the
coffee giant’s diversity program—because they’re gay. Joseph Hooks and Dorothy Baker worked at Starbucks’s corporate
headquarters in Seattle. They claim their boss, Starbucks’s director of
equal opportunity employment, Craig Sawyer, discriminated against and
harassed them and pressured them to move elsewhere in the company.
Through their attorney, David Breskin, both plaintiffs declined to
comment for this story. They are seeking unspecified damages.
The court filing alleges that Sawyer told another Starbucks staffer
he had “grown up in an environment… where there was prejudice against
homosexuals” and that he was “on a personal journey” to overcome his
bias.
In the filing, Hooks—a former employee of Washington State
representative Adam Smith and currently a staff member in Mayor Greg
Nickels’s office—claims Sawyer repeatedly made “antihomosexual
remarks” and repeatedly referred to him using female pronouns, at one
point barring him from a lunch meeting, telling him “just the boys are
going to lunch.”
Hooks also claims Sawyer pressured him to take a position elsewhere
in the company. In May 2007, court documents say, Sawyer sent out an
e-mail falsely stating that Hooks had resigned, and Starbucks
management packed up his desk.
In her filing, Baker claims after she told Sawyer she was gay, he
refused to meet with her and made unreasonable and unfair demands.
Baker also alleges Sawyer told her about work he’d done with gay men
with AIDS, whom he called “pathetic.” Another time, Baker alleges, he
told her “how he had been wrestling with one of the guys and had thrown
him through the wall.” In her filing, Baker says she felt “very
threatened”
by Sawyer.
Baker was placed on administrative leave last January while the
company conducted an investigation. Starbucks reportedly found no
evidence of harassment and fired Baker, although she says in court
documents that she was denied a copy of the investigation.
Starbucks spokeswoman Stacey Krum says the company does not comment
on pending litigation, and the company would not provide a copy of the
investigation. 
