Starbucks has been ordered to pay $25.6 million to a white former manager in a racial discrimination case, reported by Associated Press. According to the report by the news agency, Shannon Phillips, a former manager, was terminated by the company in the aftermath of a 2018 incident that took place at a Starbucks in the Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia.
A federal jury in New Jersey found that Starbucks had violated Phillips's federal civil rights, as well as a New Jersey law that prohibits discrimination based on race, awarding her $600,000 in compensatory damages and $25.6 million in punitive damages. Phillips won $600,000 in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages on Monday after a jury in New Jersey found that race was a determinative factor in her sacking, in violation of federal and state anti-discrimination.
In April 2018, a Philadelphia store manager called police on two Black men who were sitting in the coffee shop without ordering anything. Phillips, then regional manager of operations in Philadelphia, southern New Jersey, and elsewhere, was not involved with arrests. However, she said she was ordered to put a white manager who also wasn't involved on administrative leave for reasons she knew were false, according to her lawsuit.
Phillips said she was fired less than a month later after objecting to the manager being placed on leave amid the uproar, according to her lawsuit.
The company's rationale for suspending the district manager, who was not responsible for the store where the arrests took place, was an allegation that Black store managers were being paid less than white managers, according to the lawsuit. Phillips said that argument made no sense since district managers had no input on employee salaries.
The lawsuit alleged Starbucks was instead taking steps to “punish white employees" who worked in the area "in an effort to convince the community that it had properly responded to the incident."
In the closing arguments, Phillips' lawyer Laura Mattiacci told jurors Starbucks was looking for a "sacrificial lamb" to calm the outrage and show that it was taking action, Law360 reported. Picking a Black employee for such a purpose "would have blown up in their faces,” she said.
However, Starbucks denied Phillips' allegations, saying the company needed someone with a track record of “strength and resolution” during a crisis and replaced her with a regional manager who had such experience, including navigating the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.