Chick-fil-a does this to me via online / abead orders but does let me use a credit card if I’m doing it in store. I assume Starbucks is the same.

Kind of. The app doesn’t in any way tell you that you can use the card balance to pay part of your bill and then use a credit card for the rest; I only found out when a barista told me

Well… as someone who thinks he spends more money at Starbucks than is smart I’d go as far to say anyone going there is a little dumb lol

So, in the linked complaint (not a full lawsuit yet, btw), they cite "breakage" where Starbucks corporate makes an estimate each year as to the amount of banked gift cards they reasonably believe will never be spent. It looks like it has averaged about $185M in the last few years. This can be moved from deferred revenue to actual, and thereby improve the financials. This could theoretically be fucked with on the margins and allow execs to pocket more money, and to some extent it obviously encourages Starbucks to promote gift cards (in the broad sense) over other payment methods.

The whole complaint is odd. Starbucks obviously feels like they have a winner in this scheme, and almost everything alleged in the complaint is kinda fucky, to the point that I think it's worth pointing out as a consumer protection issue. That said, the individual impact on any one consumer is very small and there are numerous workarounds for a slightly motivated person, and the tone of the complaint comes off kinda like pearl-clutching and paternalistic. Maybe you have to write it that way to make sure it's taken seriously, but it's not making for very persuasive reading.