Starbucks Gets Transgender Barista Bias Suit Sent to Arbitration

Starbucks Corp. demonstrated that a transgender ex-barista who alleges a hostile work environment and retaliation agreed to arbitrate claims against the company when he took the job.

The coffee chain provided evidence that the worker electronically signed an arbitration agreement as part of the onboarding process, and the worker’s own evidence “largely substantiates Starbucks’s position,” the US District Court for the Southern District of New York said Tuesday.

Plaintiff Matthew Palmer started working at a Starbucks in Manhattan in 2015 and began transitioning in 2017. He says other employees then started harassing him, including by using feminine pronouns to refer ...