Six Farms Made It Onto Brazil's Slave Labor List. A DC Court Dismissed The Lawsuit Against Starbucks Alleging Forced Labor Anyways, Citing Jurisdictional Grounds. – CoffeeTalk

Eight Brazilian coffee workers accused Starbucks of benefitting from forced labor, yet their lawsuit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds without addressing the actual allegations. The ruling, issued by Judge Beryl A. Howell in a Washington D.C. court on February 17, indicated that the court lacked authority since the purported abuses took place in Brazil, far from its jurisdiction.

The workers provided a troubling narrative detailing their recruitment by Brazilian labor traffickers between 2022 and 2024, subjected to threats and poor conditions that led to their predicament of debt bondage. They were rescued by Brazilian authorities after enduring from just over a week to around 40 days under such harsh realities. Notably, at least six of the eight farms involved were listed on Brazil’s “Dirty List,” identifying them as employers using slave labor, with seven of these farms associated with Cooxupé, the largest coffee cooperative globally. This cooperative was identified as supplying 40% of coffee exported from Brazil to Starbucks from 2021 to 2023.

The workers specifically named Starbucks in their lawsuit, claiming violations of federal trafficking laws due to the corporation’s alleged profit from the forced labor while marketing its coffee as ethically sourced through its Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices program. At the time of the complaint, Starbucks approximately sourced 95% of its coffee from farms certified under this initiative, including those linked to Cooxupé.

Despite the workers arguing that Starbucks had a significant business presence in D.C. and misrepresented its ethical sourcing to local consumers, Judge Howell was not convinced. She differentiated their claims from other consumer fraud cases, stating that the context in those situations involved direct harm to D.C. consumers, while the Brazilian workers were not affected by Starbucks’ local advertising. The court observed that the accusations against Starbucks did not establish a direct correlation to the alleged trafficking claims, and the absence of factual evidence regarding the company’s decision-making or operational linkage in D.C. proved detrimental to the workers’ case.

Furthermore, the workers’ request for discovery concerning Starbucks’ D.C. business operations was denied as the court deemed it an impractical pursuit unlikely to yield relevant evidence impacting its jurisdictional stance. The dismissal highlights the procedural barriers in pursuing corporate accountability within global supply chains, emphasizing the disparity between corporate social responsibility and legal accountability for supplier conditions. The workers maintain the option to potentially refile in Washington State or to appeal the ruling, but presently, their claims remain unexamined on substantive issues.

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