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Starbucks’ decision to restrict its restrooms to paying customers has flushed out a wider problem: a patchwork of restroom policies that has left Americans confused and divided over who gets to use the loo and when.

Rules about restroom access in restaurants vary by state, city and county. New York requires restroom access for customers at food establishments with 20 or more seats. California requires larger restaurants to provide restrooms for customers and guests, but only if they were built after 1984. In Chicago, restaurants don’t need to have restrooms for customers unless they serve liquor.

“It’s so mish-mash,” said Steven Soifer, the co-founder and treasurer of the American Restroom Association, which advocates for clean, safe and well-designed public toilets. “If (a retailer) is serving food and drink, it’s a health hazard if there isn’t a public bathroom.”

Starbucks opened the can, so to speak, when it said last week it was reversing a 7-year-old policy that invited anyone to hang out in its stores or use the restroom, regardless of whether they bought anything. Starbucks’ new code of conduct, which will be posted in all company-owned North American stores, also bans discrimination or harassment, consumption of outside alcohol, smoking, vaping, drug use and asking strangers for money.

Reaction to the coffee chain's rule change for potty privileges was heated and divided. Many said Starbucks had the right to restrict restroom access to paying customers.

“I do think it’s up to Starbucks to set the atmosphere in their stores,” Paul Skinner, 76, a retired firefighter in Daytona Beach, Florida, told The Associated Press. “If they’ve decided that their paying customers are going to be better served by limiting restroom access, it doesn’t make me mad. I’m not going to stop going there.”

But Skinner said he also doesn’t mind when homeless people occasionally visit his local Starbucks, and he sometimes offers to buy them breakfast.

“I think about all the people who don’t have housing who would love to wander into a Starbucks and get warm,” he said. “Now there’s one more place they aren’t welcome.”

Other patrons lamented the change and said it didn’t reflect Starbucks’ often-stated goal of being a welcoming, community-oriented coffeehouse.

Norman Bauman, 81, a semi-retired science writer in New York, said he stopped going to his local Starbucks to read, meet people and maybe buy a coffee when the store hung an “Employees Only” sign on its sole restroom.

“I used to sit in a coffee shop once or twice a week and read my science journals. I always wondered how they could survive with customers like me,” Bauman said.

Social media posts ran the gamut. Some said the change was overdue, and that Starbucks' open-door policy had invited trouble and left fewer seats available for paying customers. But others criticized the company, saying the new policy made them much less likely to patronize Starbucks.

Starbucks said its new code of conduct matched those of other big retailers. The Associated Press reached out to several other restaurant chains to ask about their restroom policies, including McDonald’s and the parent companies of Dunkin’, Burger King and KFC. None responded.

But the National Retail Federation said businesses have a right to set limits on restroom use.

“Stores and restaurants are private property, and these establishments have a right to enforce certain conduct in compliance with local, state and federal laws and regulations that ensures the health and safety of the customers they serve and the people they employ,” the federation said in a statement.

Starbucks stressed this week that the code of conduct is meant to end disruptive behavior.

“We know there will be times when a customer needs to use the restroom before they’ve made a purchase, or maybe uses the restroom and then decides against making a purchase, and of course that is OK,” Starbucks spokeswoman Jaci Anderson said.

Starbucks also said it will comply with any local laws requiring bathroom access for non-customers. But that’s where things get murky.

Most states and the District of Columbia follow the International Plumbing Code, which sets minimum regulations for plumbing systems. The code says businesses must make toilet facilities available to “customers, patrons and visitors,” said Soifer, who is an adjunct professor at the Adelphi University School of Social Work in addition to his duties at the American Restroom Association.

But Andrew Rudansky, a spokesman for New York’s Department of Buildings, said the International Code Council, which developed the plumbing code, has published separate commentary making clear that restrooms are intended for people “involved with the activities of the establishment” and not just passersby.

Other states and cities use the Uniform Plumbing Code or the National Standard Plumbing Code as the basis for their regulations. Those codes also refer to restrooms as being for “customers.”

But Soifer said even the term “customer” is ambiguous.

“If I walk into a Starbucks and I’m thinking of ordering something but I’m not sure, am I a customer? Sure,” he said. A homeless person may also be a customer, he pointed out, but might be discouraged from using the restroom.

To add to the confusion, at least 20 states have passed versions of the Restroom Access Act, which requires retailers to let people with certain medical conditions, like Crohn’s disease, use their restrooms, even if those restrooms are usually reserved for employees.

The wider issue, Soifer said, is a lack of public restroom facilities in the U.S. If there were more public facilities, he said, there would be less pressure on retailers like Starbucks.

“The number one complaint tourists have about visiting the U.S. is, ‘Where are your public toilets?’” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday talked up a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank.

The new entity, Stargate, will start building out data centers and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast-evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House. The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion and could reach five times that sum.

“It's big money and high quality people,” said Trump, adding that it's “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration.

Joining Trump fresh off his inauguration at the White House were Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. All three credited Trump for helping to make the project possible, even though building has already started and the project goes back to 2024.

“This will be the most important project of this era," said Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Ellison noted that the data centers are already under construction with 10 being built so far. The chairman of Oracle suggested that the project was also tied to digital health records and would make it easier to treat diseases such as cancer by possibly developing a customized vaccine.

“This is the beginning of golden age,” said Son, referencing Trump's statement that the U.S. would be in a “golden age” with him back in the White House.

Son, a billionaire based in Japan, already committed in December to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects over the next four years. He previously committed to $50 billion in new investments ahead of Trump's first term, which included a large stake in the troubled office-sharing company WeWork.

While Trump has seized on similar announcements to show that his presidency is boosting the economy, there were already expectations of a massive buildout in data centers and electricity plants needed for the development of AI, which holds the promise of increasing productivity by automating work but also the risk of displacing jobs if poorly implemented.

The initial plans for Stargate go back to the Biden administration. Tech news outlet The Information first reported on the project in March 2024. OpenAI has long relied on Microsoft data centers to build its AI systems, but it has increasingly signaled an interest in building its own data centers.

OpenAI wrote in a letter to the Biden administration’s Commerce Department last fall that planning and permitting for such projects “can be lengthy and complex, particularly for energy infrastructure.”

Other partners in the project include Microsoft, investor MGX and the chipmakers Arm and NVIDIA, according to separate statements by Oracle and OpenAI.

The push to build data centers predates Trump's presidency. Last October, the financial company Blackstone estimated that the U.S. would see $1 trillion invested in data centers over five years, with another $1 trillion being committed internationally.

Those estimates for investments suggest that much of the new capital will go through Stargate as OpenAI has established itself as a sector leader with the 2022 launch of its ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the public imagination with its ability to answer complex questions and perform basic business tasks.

The White House has put an emphasis on making it easier to build out new electricity generation in anticipation of AI's expansion, knowing that the United States is in a competitive race against China to develop a technology increasingly being adopted by businesses.

Still, the regulatory outlook for AI remains somewhat uncertain as Trump on Monday overturned the 2023 order signed by then-President Joe Biden to create safety standards and watermarking of AI-generated content, among other goals, in hopes of putting guardrails on the technology's possible risks to national security and economic well-being.

CBS News first reported that Trump would be announcing the AI investment.

Trump supporter Elon Musk, worth more than $400 billion, was an early investor in OpenAI but has since challenged its move to for-profit status and has started his own AI company, xAI. Musk is also in charge of the “Department of Government Efficiency” created formally on Monday by Trump with the goal of reducing government spending.

Trump previously in January announced a $20 billion investment by DAMAC Properties in the United Arab Emirates to build data centers tied to AI.

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AP reporter Matt O’Brien contributed to this report from Providence, Rhode Island.