Though the South Beach, Florida store in question was closed for renovations this past Sunday, some mothers gathered at a Starbucks and held a "nurse-in" to protest the expulsion of a woman named Nicole Coombs from the store. Coombs claims that she was asked to leave for breast-feeding her 4-month old son. The Starbucks manager, however, maintains that Coombs was asked to leave for changing her baby's diaper on one of the tables in the cafe.
Coombs states that the store manager asked her to leave while she was breastfeeding. She said she would leave as soon as she was done, because she was so outraged that she did not want to remain in the store. Then, according to Coombs, she proceeded to change her baby's diaper. She does not deny that she changed the baby on the table where people ordinarily eat. Now, the store manager says that he did not say anything to Coombs about breast feeding, which is perfectly acceptable in the store. He contends that he approached her as she changed her baby on the table and asked her to stop. When she refused, she was asked to leave.
Management and employees of that Starbucks store have never had any problems with nursing mothers in the past and have many women with infants as regular customers. This tends to support the store's side of the story, though the protesting mothers clearly support Coombs. They believe that Starbucks may have broken a Florida law that allows mothers to breastfeed anywhere they are legally allowed to be.
Unfortunately, Coombs' story doesn't make that much sense, so it is entirely possible that she is clinging to it to hang on to her 15 minutes of fame. If she was really outraged, why would she have remained to change her baby's diaper? And, regardless of the situation, why on earth would she change the baby on the table?














