Starbucks promotes the fact that it offers comprehensive gender-affirming care as a part of its employee benefits package.(1) Specifically, the company has “partnered with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to create a gender-affirming care medical policy that is inclusive of medical services that most companies have historically considered cosmetic.”(2)

WPATH’s public Standards for Care (Version 8) focuses on aiding persons in transition(3) but declines to affirmatively state that coverage should extend to detransitioning.(4) Starbucks’ website also is apparently silent on detransition coverage.(5)

It is worth noting that reliance on WPATH has itself become risky. For example, in April 2025, the White House noted that WPATH standards “were not drafted based on scientific evidence, but on political considerations.”(6) Critically, this opens institutions pushing those standards up to potentially significant damages.(7) All may explain why Texas recently passed a law “requiring health plans cover detransition.”(8)

Detransitioning is likely at least as expensive as transitioning. For context, the NIH has estimated that the average cost for surgical intervention in gender-affirming care is $41,236 per person on average.(9) Additionally, hormone treatment costs per person vary based on the hormone prescribed; for example: a complete, 6.8 year dose of GnRH costs $17,838 per transitioner.(10)

These numbers, while already expensive, do not include individual costs involved in reparative procedures, medicines, or health complications which may arise due to detransitioning.(11) It would arguably be an injustice to not include detransitioning procedures as part of “gender affirming care.” Unfortunately, promoting gender transitioning while ignoring detransitioning may be an embedded part of transgender ideology.(12)

Beyond an appeal to base justice, the Supreme Court has clarified that employers cannot discriminate based on gender identity or expression when making employment decisions (including healthcare), without violating Title VII.(13) The Court has clarified earlier this year that Title VII protections extend to both majority and minority populations equally.(14) Refusal to provide detransition services could expose Starbucks to costly anti-discrimination lawsuits involving damages and sanctions from private plaintiffs and the government.(15)

And lest anyone try to argue that potentially covered individuals represent too small a number to be material, recall that a single transgender influencer was apparently able to destroy “a whopping $27 billion in market value” at Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2023.(16)

In light of the foregoing, shareholders should vote in favor of our Proposal.

(1) https://www.starbucksbenefits.com/en-us/home/health-benefits/medical-dental-vision/

(2) Id.

(3) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644

(4) See generally, id.

(5) Supra note 1.

(6) https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/report-to-the-president-on-protecting-children-from-surgical-and-chemical-mutilation-executive-summary/

(7) See generally, e.g., Campbell Miller Payne, PLLC (“seeking justice for the detransitioner community nationwide”), https://cmppllc.com/

(8) https://www.yahoo.com/news/abbott-signs-bill-requiring-health-155158778.html

(9) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9679590/

(10) Id.

(11) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9315415/

(12) See, generally, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-outcomes/ (“detransitioning and regret have long been untouchable subjects”).

(13) Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644, 666-73 (2020).

(14) Ames v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Servs., 605 U.S. 303, 309-10 (2025).

(15) https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity/

(16) https://nypost.com/2023/06/02/bud-light-parent-anheuser-buschs-stock-lost-27b-over-dylan-mulvaney/