June 14 (UPI) — A federal jury has ordered Starbuck’s to pay $25.6 million to former regional manager Shannon Phillips, who alleged she was fired because she’s White.
The jury awarded $600,000 in compensatory damages plus $25 million in punitive damages. Jurors said Starbucks violated Phillips’ civil rights.
Phillips was fired in 2018 in the wake of two Black men getting arrested after sitting at a table at the Starbucks Spruce Street location in Philadelphia to wait for a business associate.
The men settled their case against Starbucks for an undisclosed sum and also settled with the city of Philadelphia.
Phillips’ attorney said she was a scapegoat for the company to show action was being taken over the arrest of the two men.
Her lawsuit asserted she had nothing to do with the arrests. The suit said she was fired after objecting to putting the White district manager of the Spruce Street store on leave at a Starbucks location for allegedly paying Black workers less than White employees, an allegation Phillips said she knew to be false.
Starbucks countered in court filings that Phillips was not fired because of her race, but because she failed to lead her employees by remaining silent following the Black men’s arrest.
Phillips said in court documents, “I was terminated because I am White. If I was Black, I would not have been terminated. I was terminated because I complained of and objected to race discrimination.”
She also said in her lawsuit that Starbucks punished Philadelphia-area White employees not involved in the arrests in an effort to convince the Philadelphia community that it had properly responded to the arrests incident.
After those arrests in 2018 Starbucks closed all 8,000 Starbuck’s U.S. locations for racial-bias training.