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Who is actually doing the suing here? If it's the ADA themselves then this is a mockery and it makes the ADA look like a joke. I'm lactose intolerant. Being lactose intolerant it is not medically necessary to not drink milk. I can drink milk. I can eat cheese, yogurt, etc. If I think about it, I take a little pill that has lactase in it to help. If I don't then I get diarrhea and then I move on with my life. Not to mention, nobody is forcing you to go to Starbucks. If you don't want to drink milk and you don't want to pay extra, then don't go to Starbucks. I know that's a hard concept for some to understand but you have free will. You can break free from the clutches of capitalism. I absolutely hate Starbucks and haven't been to one since 2012 and even I think this lawsuit is frivolous.
Edit: after reading your comments I see everyone's point. With that being said, wouldn't pizza places that charge more for gluten-free crust fall under the same category?
That's not how the ADA works. You could say the same for wheelchair ramps, but ultimately it's on the store owner to reasonably provide accomodations to people who want to use their services. It's not on the disabled person to pick and select who will accommodate them or not. It's why businesses are required to reserve a portion of their parking lot to those with handicap placards. It shouldn't be up to each disabled person to figure out which business they can go to.
What Starbucks is doing would be akin to Walmart charging an extra buck for you to use one of their mobility scooters or an extra $5 if you require the assistance from an employee because you can't reach something.
I don't know the ins and outs of the ADA, but I disagree with your analogy. What Starbucks is doing is akin to Walmart charging a different price for milk and oat milk, which I don't think anyone would say is not allowed. It's not like there's a sheet of lactose you have to walk through to get into a Starbucks or anything, there's just things on the menu that people with some food allergies can't order.
Lactose intolerance is not a disability.
You cant sue Five Guys because you have a peanut allergy and they didn’t provide you a safe peanut free environment.
You can’t sue McDonald’s because they don’t have a non dairy cheese replacement for your cheeseburger.
Lactose intolerance, along with all other food allergies and intolerances, is a medical condition which is protected under the ADA. You don't have to accomodate it, but if you do, you cannot charge extra for it.
Five Guys has peanut allergy signs on the doors. They are safe.
McDonald's hamburgers are cheaper than their cheeseburgers. They are safe.
A Starbucks latte is offered with dairy or a non-dairy creamers, and they charged more for the latter, violating the ADA rights of every lactose intolerant customer that purchased a non-dairy latte.
But a latte is a dairy based product, the non dairy cheaper alternative would be coffee. As the non dairy cheaper alternative of a cheeseburger is to remove the cheese.
ADA doesn't care about cheaper, watching the movie with no dialogue is cheaper than giving a closed captioning box to deaf people, but theaters still have to do it. The standard is undue burden. Starbucks is going to have a hard time claiming it's going to bankrupt them if they can't charge extra for oat milk.
Black coffee and a latte are not the same product just because they both are coffee-based drinks. A latte doesn't use brewed coffee at all, it uses espresso shots, and thus is mostly milk, not coffee. If you ordered a latte and got a cup of black coffee, that doesn't even come close to what you ordered, unlike your hamburger/cheeseburger analogy where only the cheese of the difference
Either way, Starbucks does provide a non-dairy alternative for their latte however already: oat milk, almond milk, and soy milk, but they charge for those alternatives and that is where the issue is.
If they did not provide alternatives at all, or if they did not charge extra, there would be no issue. They either would have to remove the alternative options, which would reduce choice for everyone, or provide an alternative at no additional cost, which only eats into their massive profit margins a tiny bit. At wholesale bulk amounts like they buy, the cost difference is negligible for the product, and the markup on that substitution is insane.
Not if they offer non-dairy creamer it isn't...
If an accomodation is offered you cannot charge extra for it. This is not a difficult concept.
If McDonald's offered vegan cheese as a substitute for their cheeseburgers, and they upcharged someone with lactose intolerance, they'd be in the same trouble. That's why they never brought the McPlant to US markets - because they didn't want to introduce an accommodation they couldn't monetize.
Unless they claim to have an allergen-free kitchen.
The Americans with Disabilities act is a civil rights law passed in 1990 that protects disabled Americans from discrimination. The ADA is not an organization that can sue on anyone's behalf, it is a law that gives disabled people the right to sue when they are discriminated against, and it gives the justice department the power to punish businesses that fail to comply with the law
Asking for non-dairy creamer is a reasonable accomodation under the ADA if you are lactose intolerant. They don't have to offer it, but if they do, they cannot legally charge you extra to accomodate a disability or medical condition. That is discrimination under the ADA.
You may think this seems trivial or frivolous, but this is a clear case of Starbucks, a multibillion dollar international corporation, violating one of the most basic protections the ADA offers. It would be an injustice to turn a blind eye to it if you care about protecting disabled Americans from discrimination.
I think you're missing the big picture.
Just because one can choose not to go to Starbucks doesn't relieve Starbucks of the requirement to provide equal access and provide equitable services to those with a disability or medical limitation.
Just because you are lactose intolerant and can handle things with with some milk products doesn't mean that everyone with lactose intolerance can. There can be those that have much more severe reactions.
There are also those that truly cannot have diary at all. People have full blown milk allergies where if they ingest diary they could have anaphylaxis shock.
Making accomodations for equitable products/services for a medical disability cannot cost extra to the disabled person.
I don't think it means that all non-dairy creamers necessarily need to be available for free. It only means that one does. Whatever non-dairy creamer is likely the cheapest.