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TheNewOrleansChannel.com - Station - Breast-feeding Mom Says She Was Booted From Starbucks

Breast-feeding Mom Says She Was Booted From Starbucks

POSTED: 2:53 pm CDT July 15, 2005 UPDATED: 3:12 pm CDT July 15, 2005

NEW ORLEANS -- A discrimination claim has been filed against a Metairie coffee shop after a woman said she was asked to leave for trying to breast-feed her newborn.

Kristina Pearson, of Mandeville, said she called 6 On Your Side because she didn't know where else to turn for help.

Pearson said her daughter, Ella, was just 6 weeks old when they went on their first outing to a Starbucks in Metairie.

"I hadn't planned on bringing any bottles with me at all," Pearson said. "I was breast-feeding, so there was no need to bring any bottles."

Pearson said she had never breast-fed in public, so she asked permission.

"(A worker) was like, 'Oh, OK. No problem,'" Pearson said. "Then, about a minute later, a manager came out and said he said, 'I'm sorry, but you can't do this.' He said, 'Personally, I don't have a problem with it, but my customers will.' And then as we were packing up to leave, he offered me a free coffee."

Pearson said by then, she was angry.

"I told him I thought it was illegal, that he couldn't ask me to leave," she said. "And he said, 'Well, I don't know about that, but you can't do it here.'"

Under Louisiana law, it is discriminatory for a person to be denied the "full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services in a public place on the grounds that the individual is a mother breast-feeding her baby."

"Kristina went and asked about it, and she's extremely modest, so no one would have been aware she was doing it," said Pearson's mother, Mary Francis.

At another local coffee shop, Caffe! Caffe!, manager Aimee Lejuene said breast-feeding has never been an issue.

"I've never had any complaints," Lejeune said. "Most of the time, we are unaware that it's even happening."

A spokesman for Starbucks said the company has a broad and diverse group of customers -- including nursing mothers -- and when they learned of Pearson's complaint, they quickly apologized.

"I think the manager should have been aware of the law as part of his role in running a Starbucks," Francis said.

Starbucks is now reminding all Louisiana district managers about the Public Accommodations law.