A white former Starbucks regional manager has been awarded $25.6 million in damages after a federal jury found that her race was a determining factor in her firing in 2018.
Shannon Phillips won $25 million in punitive damages and $600,000 in compensatory damages on Monday after the jury in New Jersey found that federal and state anti-discrimination laws had been violated.
The former Starbucks employee was sacked amid a fallout from the arrests of two black men at a Philadelphia store in 2018. The arrests sparked online outrage, large protests and the closure of all 8,000 Starbucks stores across the US, throwing the coffee chain into crisis. While a black colleague kept his job, Phillips was fired.
The incident, which happened in April 2018, saw two black men enter the coffee chain for a business meeting with a white man, who had not yet turned up. As they waited, and before placing an order, one of the men asked if he could use the bathroom. Staff refused on the grounds that he had not ordered anything.
The men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were eventually asked to leave, but when they refused to do so, an employee called the police, who handcuffed the men and escorted them from the Starbucks.
Their arrests, which were recorded on video and uploaded on social media, resulted in millions of views online, furious protests and the closure of all 8,000 Starbucks stores in the US, plunging the brand into unprecedented crisis mode – and held anti-bias training for all workers while stores remained closed for a day.
The men later accepted a symbolic $1 settlement from the city of Philadelphia over the incident, which also pledged to donate €200,000 to support a young entrepreneur’s education programme at their request.
“Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson will be paid $1 each from the city, and have their arrest records expunged.”- @stephgosk reports on the two men that were arrested from a Starbucks pic.twitter.com/18Ih9dFR8c
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) May 3, 2018
Ms Phillips, a regional manager, was fired, but the black manager of the store where the incident took place, in the Rittenhouse Square neighbourhood of Philadelphia, kept his job. In 2019, Ms Phillips sued Starbucks, accusing them of wrongfully terminating her and of unfairly punishing white employees like her in reaction to the arrests of the men.
At the time of the debacle, Ms Phillips oversaw around 100 stores in Philadelphia, South Jersey, Delaware, and parts of Maryland. She had been promoted to the role in 2011 after what she described as her “exemplary performance” throughout her six years as a district manager in Ohio.
As part of her lawsuit against her former employer, she claimed that Starbucks had tried to punish her and other white employees in and around the Philedelphia area despite the fact they were not involved in the events which led to police being called on Nelson and Robinson. She insisted throughout that she had emerged herself in the company’s damage control efforts.
She also alleged that a staff member, who was one of her superiors, a black woman, had told her to suspend a white manager who was in charge of stores in Philadelphia – but not the store at the centre of the controversy – due to allegations that employee had been discriminatory, which was a claim Ms Phillips said she knew was untrue. She said that she was let go not long after she refused to fire the white manager.
She also insisted throughout the case that no action was brought against the black manager who was in charge of the Rittenhouse Square store, who Ms Phillips said had “promoted” the employee who called the police on the men.
In court filings, Starbucks denied she had been fired due to her race, and said she was terminated because she had performed poorly in response to the episode that led to the arrests of the men.
Lawyers representing the ex manager argued that the upper management of Starbucks were “looking for a ‘scapegoat’ to terminate to show action was being taken”. Laura Carlin Mattiacci, a lawyer for Ms Phillips, welcomed the outcome of the case, saying she and her client were “very pleased” with the unanimous verdict.
She went on to say that “she proved by ‘clear and convincing evidence’ that punitive damages were warranted” under New Jersey law.
A Starbucks spokeswoman declined to comment on the outcome of the case, according to The New York Times.