Starbucks Axes Vaccine Mandate For Employees In Dramatic Turnaround Following Supreme Court Decision

Employees at Starbucks will no longer be required to receive a COVID-19 vaccine to continue working in their stores, the company declared in a recent memo.

On Tuesday, Starbucks’ Chief Operating Officer John Culver emailed employees to inform them that there would no longer be a mandate for them to submit their vaccination status. Culver explained that this choice was made in line with the U.S Supreme Court’s recent ruling against President Joe Biden’s nationwide vaccination mandate for large private employers.

“We respect the court’s ruling and will comply,” Culver wrote in the memo, according to the Associated Press.

Starbucks is among the highest-profile instances of a large corporation choosing to abandon a vaccine mandate since the ruling came down last week. In deciding against the Biden administration, the Court wrote that the mandate represented a "significant encroachment into the lives - and health - of a vast number of employees."

After Biden first issued his order on Sept. 9, the White House estimated that it would impact close to 84 million workers across the United States.

Starbucks, which employs 220,000 employees nationwide, had only recently told its workforce that they would be required to submit their vaccination status by Jan. 10 or submit to weekly testing as of Feb. 9. Culver, the COO, said at the time that this was being done in line with the federal mandate and that employees would have to cover their own testing costs.

In the new memo, Culver said the company continues to strongly encourage vaccinations, booster shots and medical-grade surgical masks at work.