Six farms made Brazil's slave labor list. The court dismissed anyway
Eight Brazilian coffee workers accused Starbucks of profiting from forced labor. The court dismissed their lawsuit on jurisdictional technicalities.
The February 17 ruling in a Washington D.C. court never addressed whether the workers were actually trafficked and forced to harvest coffee beans. Instead, Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled the court simply had no authority to hear the case because the alleged abuses happened thousands of miles away.
The decision reveals how geography can shield companies from accountability when workers in their supply chains claim exploitation, even when those workers say the final product ends up on American shelves.
The workers told a harrowing story in their complaint. Between 2022 and 2024, they said Brazilian labor traffickers recruited them to work on coffee farms. When they arrived, the complaint alleged, they faced threats, degrading conditions, and debt bondage that kept them trapped. Some worked for just over a week before Brazilian officials rescued them. Others alleged they endured roughly 40 days.
At least six of the eight farms later appeared on Brazil's "Dirty List," a government registry of employers known to use slave labor.
Seven of those farms were members of Cooxupé, the world's largest coffee cooperative, which the workers said supplied 40 percent of coffee exported from Brazil to Starbucks between 2021 and 2023. Cooxupé has more than 18,000 member farms, and over 2,000 of them supplied to Starbucks as of 2021, according to the complaint.
The workers sued only Starbucks. They did not name the traffickers, the farm owners, Cooxupé, or anyone else in the supply chain as defendants.
Their lawsuit claimed Starbucks violated federal trafficking laws and benefited from forced labor while marketing its coffee as ethically sourced through its Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices program. By 2022, Starbucks sourced nearly 95 percent of its coffee from farms certified under this program, which includes Cooxupé suppliers.
But the case never got to those allegations. Starbucks argued the court in D.C. had no jurisdiction because the company is based in Washington State and the alleged harm occurred in Brazil.
The workers countered that Starbucks does substantial business in D.C., operates stores there, and marketed allegedly misleading claims about ethical sourcing to D.C. consumers. They pointed to consumer fraud cases where D.C. courts exercised jurisdiction over companies that advertised deceptive products to local residents.
Judge Howell was not persuaded. The difference, she wrote, is that those fraud cases involved D.C. consumers harmed by deceptive advertising in D.C. These workers are Brazilian nationals who claim harm in Brazil from Brazilian actors. The alleged false marketing to D.C. consumers had no real connection to their trafficking claims.
The workers argued only that Starbucks deceived D.C. consumers, the judge noted, but never explained how that deception affected them as non-consumers working overseas.
Allowing the case to proceed on that theory, Judge Howell reasoned, would mean the workers could sue Starbucks in any of the 50 states where it operates stores. The Supreme Court has made clear that a company's general business activities in a state do not create jurisdiction for unrelated claims.
The workers did not allege that Starbucks ordered their trafficking, that D.C. employees made sourcing decisions, or that coffee they harvested was specifically sent to D.C. stores. Those factual gaps proved fatal.
The court also rejected the workers' request to conduct discovery into Starbucks' D.C. business operations, calling it a fishing expedition unlikely to uncover facts that would change the jurisdictional analysis.
The dismissal leaves the substantive allegations unexamined. The workers could potentially refile in Washington State, where Starbucks is headquartered, or appeal. But for now, the courthouse door has closed on procedural grounds, not factual ones.
For companies managing global supply chains, the ruling underscores how difficult it remains for workers to pursue accountability claims against end purchasers when alleged abuses occur overseas. It also highlights the continuing tension between corporate social responsibility commitments and legal liability for conditions at supplier facilities.
