Personally I think concepts of DEI had a purpose (long before that term existed) and then at some point became gradually less relevant or needed to be adjusted to the point that it was counterproductive in many ways. It was a bandaid hack which ended up creating new problems, sort of like how unions cover for some of capitalism's flaws while creating a new set of problems to contend with.

So on this point I agree with you, but it does not substantially subtract from my overall view of Costco as a company in every other regard. I trust that in time they will revise whatever needs revision in order to be fair to everyone involved. Oddly enough, at least in my area, this doesn't seem to have resulted in a disproportionate amount of one race or another.

Even if that was the case, your infering that customers who paid these fees are not entitled to be refunded when their suing the u.s. government for reimbursement of those collected fees.

If the narrative that u.s. consumers paid inflated prices because of this then the money should go back to the consumers.

I guess Costco suing for a refund means they need to finance that campaign, and Costco consumers can do the same to them; maybe Costco should just drop their claim and let consumers try and recover from the US government...