A federal jury in New Jersey has awarded $25.6 million to a former Starbucks regional manager who accused the company of firing her as a racial scapegoat following the arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia store.
Shannon Phillips, a white woman who had worked with Starbucks for 13 years, sued the coffee chain giant in 2019, claiming that she had nothing to do with the racially charged incident but was unfairly punished in an attempt to quell the public outrage.
In her complaint (pdf), Phillips alleged that Starbucks “took steps to punish white employees who had not been involved in the arrests, but who worked in and around the city of Philadelphia, in an effort to convince the community that it had properly responded to the incident.”…