Jury finds Starbucks employee fired due to race. How much money will she get?

Jim Walsh, Cherry Hill Courier-Post
Updated ·2 min read
2

CAMDEN – A jury has awarded $25.6 million in damages to a South Jersey woman who claimed she was fired by Starbucks due to her race.

Shannon Phillips, who is white, lost her job as a regional director a few weeks after a widely publicized incident in April 2018 when police were called to remove two Black men from a Starbucks in Center City Philadelphia.

In her lawsuit, Phillips asserted Starbucks punished white employees who were not involved in the arrest “in an effort to convince the community that it had properly responded to the incident."

Phillips, a 13-year employee who worked from her home in Woolwich, oversaw about 100 Starbucks stores in the South Jersey-Philadelphia region, as well as in Delaware and parts of Maryland.

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Her lawsuit noted she had received a bonus one month before being terminated with the statement, “The situation is not recoverable.”

An attorney for Starbucks argued Phillips was fired due to her lax management style.

Starbucks: No bias in Shannon Phillips firing

“Shannon Phillips not only failed to lead, she did not even attempt to lead, and rather did absolutely nothing when Starbucks was in the midst of a crisis in April 2018,” the lawyer, Hannah Lindgren, said in an unsuccessful motion to dismiss the suit in November 2021.

A South Jersey woman has sued Starbucks Coffee, alleging she was fired from a management position because she is white.
A South Jersey woman has sued Starbucks Coffee, alleging she was fired from a management position because she is white.

“Ms. Phillips’ failure to lead her team during the crisis was her downfall,” Lindgren asserted.

A Starbucks representative declined to comment on the verdict.

A jury in Camden federal court agreed with Phillips, finding Starbucks had acted with “reckless indifference” to her civil rights and had violated New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination.

It awarded punitive damages of $25 million and compensatory damages of $600,000.

The jury returned the verdict on June 12, after a trial that began on June 5.

Black patrons arrested in Starbucks incident

In the April 2018 incident, a white store manager called police over two Black men at a Starbucks at 18th and Spruce streets.

Police arrested the men, who had declined to order coffee while waiting for the arrival of a third person for a business meeting, U.S. District Judge Joel Slomsky said in an August 2012 decision.

The incident prompted protests outside the store and unfavorable publicity for Starbucks nationally.

The Seattle-based firm sent top executives to Philadelphia and agreed to a financial settlement with the Black patrons, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, in an effort to defuse the controversy.

But Phillips’ lawsuit claimed Starbucks took no action against a Black district manager responsible for the Philadelphia location.

Instead, it alleged, the company ordered Phillips to suspend a white district manager “because of an allegation of discriminatory conduct that (Phillips) knew to be false."

Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Email him at jwalsh@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Shannon Phillips wins lawsuit claiming bias in dismissal by Starbucks