Starbucks has fired back at a former store manager who sued the coffeehouse chain over his claim of having faced “egregious” discrimination because he is straight.
Christopher Thevanesan’s lawsuit is “nonsensical,” “entirely without merit,” and “devoid of any facts” to support his allegations, according to the company’s motion to dismiss.
In his January 28 suit, which was first reported by The Independent, Thevanesan described himself as a “heterosexual, gender typical man,” and said higher-ups at the Rochester, New York Starbucks location where he worked treated him “in a materially different manner” than employees who were “not heterosexual and/or gender typical men.”
But, while Thevanesan insisted he had suffered “extreme and outrageous” persecution at the hands of gay team members, his suit does not lay out any “specific instances of harassment,” Starbucks argues in its motion, which was filed last Friday.
“[Thevanesan] fails to allege the time, place, or manner of even a single instance of supposed ‘harassment,’” the motion says.
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In his lawsuit, Thevanesan accused Starbucks of neglecting to properly train the employees he supervised in how to properly deal with others. Starbucks says in its motion that this argument is “nonsensical[,] since as the Store Manager, he would be responsible for training.”
And, as far as Thevanesan’s firing goes, which his suit says occurred “because he is a heterosexual, gender typical man” — it in fact “does not set forth any facts even remotely connecting his termination to his sex or sexual orientation,” the company’s motion continues.
“Plaintiff’s allegations read: ‘I am a straight male. I believe my subordinates were gay. I was terminated. My termination must have been because I was a straight male,’” the motion asserts. “These conclusory allegations are insufficient to state a claim in any forum.”
Jacqueline Phipps Polito, the attorney representing Starbucks against Thevanesan, did not respond on Wednesday to a request for comment.
According to Thevanesan’s lawsuit, which was filed under New York State’s Human Rights Law, he was “a model employee who performed the essential functions of his employment in an exemplary fashion.”
At the same time, Thevanesan argued, his LGBTQ+ underlings created a “hostile” work environment for him due to his “gender typicality and sexual orientation,” contending he was subsequently fired for complaining about it.
Thevanesan’s attorney, Neil Flynn, told The Independent earlier this month that his client’s heterosexuality had been “weaponized” against him.
“Management was indifferent to his complaints,” Flynn said, claiming gay Starbucks workers in the store and surrounding area were attempting to drive out their straight colleagues.
Thevanesan was hired to manage Starbucks store #47825 in 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile. The employees who worked there “were members of the LGBQT+ community,” Thevanesan’s complaint states.
It says he was fired in February 2022, and calls the reasons “pretextual,” without providing additional details.
Thevanesan’s grievance is, in some ways, reminiscent of a high-profile suit brought by Marlean Ames, a straight Ohio woman who sued her employer, the state Department of Youth Services, arguing she was demoted and replaced by a gay man. After a decision against Ames by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, she took her case to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the high court now rules in favor of Ames, it could open the door for others to sue on the basis of “reverse discrimination.”
However, Starbucks maintains in its motion to dismiss that Thevanesan’s suit is “entirely without merit, because, even assuming the allegations… are true, [the suit] contains nothing more than legal conclusions and a bare recitation of the elements of each claim, devoid of any facts supporting [his] claims.”
“At best, [Thevanesan] simply claims that he falls within a protected class (heterosexual, gender typical male), and therefore anything that [he] disagrees with that happened to occur at Starbucks, must be because of the same,” the motion states. “The law does not allow a complaint to be based on such speculation and conclusory allegations without detailed factual support,” dubbing Thevanesan’s suit “woefully deficient.”
“Accordingly,” the motion concludes, “the Court must dismiss the [suit] in its entirety.”
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