Starbucks Ordered to Pay $25 Million to Manager Who Claims She Was Fired Because She's White

Shannon Phillips was awarded $25 million in punitive damages and $600,000 in compensatory damages

A jury has awarded a former Starbucks regional manager $25.6 million after she claimed she was wrongfully terminated following the arrests of two Black men at a Philadelphia store in 2018.

Shannon Phillips was awarded $25 million in punitive damages and $600,000 in compensatory damages this week, as a New Jersey jury determined race was a factor in her termination, per Phillips' representation Console Mattiacci Law, which shared an article from Law360 to Facebook.

The trial comes over five years after two men — Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson — held a business meeting at the coffee shop in April 2018 without making a purchase and were subsequently escorted outside and arrested. A clip of their arrest went viral online, prompting boycotts and an apology from the company.

In her lawsuit, Phillips claimed she was ordered to place an uninvolved White manager on administrative leave and refused to do so, per the outlet, and said she was fired less than a month after objecting.

The manager that Phillips was asked to place on leave was being suspended following accusations that Black store managers were paid less than White managers — but Phillips argued that district managers did not have a say in employee salaries, the Associated Press reported of the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims the company was working to "punish White employees... in an effort to convince the community that it had properly responded to the incident." Phillips' lawyer Laura Mattiacci reportedly claimed in a closing statement that the company was looking for a "sacrificial lamb" following the 2018 arrests going viral.

Starbucks did not provide comment on the legal decision when PEOPLE reached out to the company for comment.

According to the Law360 report, the company denied Phillips' allegations and claimed that they needed a manager who showed signs of "strength and resolution" during times of crisis. Phillips' attorney pointed to testimony from another district manager who claimed she was beloved by workers, per the AP.

Related: Starbucks Apologizes After Boycott Erupts Over Video of Black Men Arrested in Philadelphia Store

The attorney also told the New Jersey Law Journal that she would seek about $3 million for lost pay and roughly $1 million on her fee application, per AP.

In 2018, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson called the two men's arrests" reprehensible" and "wrong."

As previously reported of the incident, Nelson said he asked to use the restroom immediately after walking into a store in April 2018 but was told they were for paying customers only, so he "left it at that." He said an employee approached them and asked them if she could help with anything before police arrived and subsequently arrested them.

"In reviewing [the arrests], the guidelines that they had in place indicated a certain set of scenarios in which the police were to be called. Now there are some scenarios where the police should be called—if there's threats or disturbance those may be appropriate times—in this case, none of that occurred," Johnson told Good Morning America's Robin Roberts. "It was completely inappropriate to engage the police."

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