Labor News & Commentary September 23 Starbucks violated federal labor law by firing baristas at a Madison, Wisconsin...

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/september-23-2025/

By Miriam Li

Miriam Li is a student at Harvard Law School and a member of the Labor and Employment Lab.

In today’s News and Commentary, the EEOC plans to close pending worker charges based solely on unintentional discrimination claims and the NLRB held that Starbucks violated federal labor law by firing baristas at a Madison, Wisconsin café.

According to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) plans to close all pending charges that allege only unintentional discrimination—also known as “disparate impact” discrimination—with limited exceptions. The memo instructs staff to wrap up those cases by the end of September and issue right-to-sue letters by October 31, allowing workers to file their own federal lawsuits within 90 days of receipt. Federal employment law bars intentional discrimination as well as facially neutral policies that disproportionately harm protected groups. Under the recent memo, EEOC charges alleging both disparate impact and intentional discrimination may continue, but staff have been directed not to facilitate conciliation for charges based solely on disparate-impact liability. The move follows an April executive order from President Trump directing federal agencies to halt enforcement actions based on disparate-impact theory.

Meanwhile, on Monday, a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge (ALJ) held that Starbucks violated federal labor law when it fired four baristas as part of what the judge called “a scorched-earth campaign” against unionizing workers in Madison, Wisconsin. The case began in 2022, when a union organizing meeting at a Madison café ran past closing. Starbucks then fired four employees for remaining in the café after hours. After finding “repeated and egregious violations” of the National Labor Relations Act, the ALJ issued a broad cease-and-desist order to deter further unlawful efforts to thwart union activity. As the ALJ noted, despite numerous findings in recent years that the company violated federal labor law, “Starbucks’ behavior continues unabated.”