A Starbucks regional manager has won a lawsuit against the coffee establishment after a federal jury determined she was fired because of her race.
Starbucks regional manager Sharon Phillips, who previously oversaw a number of Starbucks locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit against her former employer after being fired for a viral encounter that occurred in a Philadelphia Starbucks location back in 2018.
The incident involved two black men being arrested for trespassing after refusing to leave the store. The two men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were denied access to the store’s bathroom because they were not paying customers. When they were asked to leave, they refused and claimed they were waiting in the store for a business partner.
When officers arrived to arrest these two men for trespassing, the interaction was filmed and posted to social media. The arrest quickly turned into a racial issue, with internet users claiming the men were arrested because of their race.
In response to these allegations, Starbucks fired Phillips. They did not, however, fire the black Philadelphia store manager. Starbucks’ CEO at the time, Kevin Johnson, apologized after the incident and called the entire interaction “reprehensible.”
Phillips claimed that she was fired because the company wanted to use her as a “scapegoat” and appease the activists alleging this was a racially motivated arrest. At the same time of her firing, Starbucks ordered 8,000 locations to temporarily shut down for employees across the country to go through “anti-bias training.”
The federal jury found that Phillips’ race was used as a factor in Starbucks’ decision to fire her. As a result, Phillips was awarded $25 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
