News/Commentary

Starbucks manager wins suit claiming she was fired for being white, scores $25.6 million

June 15, 2023 | | Print Article

A former Starbucks regional director who claimed she was fired for being white has won a $25.6 million lawsuit against the corporate behemoth.

Shannon Phillips, who sued Starbucks in 2019, worked at the company for 13 years and oversaw around 100 stores up until two black men were arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia in April of 2018.

As previously reported, the two black men were arrested after they kept loitering inside a  Philadelphia Starbucks after being denied access to the bathroom. Despite the loitering rule (no loitering) and bathroom rule (no bathroom use without a purchase) being longstanding policies, the arrests prompted nationwide racial protests.

The protests in turn spurred Starbucks into going “woke” and not only nixing the offending policies but also launching a “racial-bias education program” for employees.

Amid its “woke” transformation, Starbucks allegedly began targeting white employees, including eventually Phillips, she argued in her suit.

“[S]he said she was ordered to put a white manager who … wasn’t involved [with what happened in Philadelphia] on administrative leave for reasons she knew were false,” according to the Associated Press.

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“Phillips said she was fired less than a month later after objecting to the manager being placed on leave amid the uproar,” the AP reported Wednesday.

Her attorney, Laura Mattiacci, argued in court that she was fired as a “sacrificial lamb” to quell the outrage/backlash and show that Starbucks was taking action.

“This was all about the appearances, the optics of what they did. If Shannon Phillips is black, does it play out like this? This case is about Starbucks and self-preservation,” she reportedly said.

Starbucks pushed back on this argument in court.

“Starbucks denied Phillips’ allegations, saying the company needed someone with a track record of ‘strength and resolution’ during a crisis and replaced her with a regional manager who had such experience, including navigating the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings,” the AP notes.

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“During this time of crisis, Starbucks’ Philadelphia market needed a leader who could perform. Ms. Phillips failed in every aspect of that role,” Starbucks’ lawyers specifically argued, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mattiacci tried to counter this argument in court by citing the testimony of district manager Paul Sykes, a black Starbucks employee who used to work under Phillips.

“Paul Sykes, the Black district manager who oversaw the [store where the black men were arrested], told the jury that Phillips was a well-liked manager who worked tirelessly following the arrests,” the Inquirer notes.

The jury in the case ultimately sided with Phillips.

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“Following a six-day trial in Camden, the jury Monday ordered Starbucks to pay Shannon Phillips of Woolwich Township $25 million in punitive damages and $600,000 in compensatory damages,” according to the Inquirer.

“Jurors determined that Starbucks had violated Phillips’ federal civil rights, as well as New Jersey laws prohibiting racial discrimination, when it fired her from her post as the Philadelphia-area regional operations director amid fallout surrounding the men’s arrests,” the paper notes.

The ruling prompted celebration on social media.

Look:

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All this comes roughly a year after Starbucks began rethinking its new loitering/bathroom policy.

“Starbucks’s chief executive, Howard Schultz, says the company is considering ending its open bathroom policy. Speaking on Thursday at The Times’s DealBook D.C. policy forum, Mr. Schultz said the coffee giant might no longer allow people who were not customers to use their stores’ bathrooms,” The New York Times reported in June of 2022.

“But on Thursday Mr. Schultz said that a growing mental health problem was making it difficult for his company’s employees to manage its stores under the current policies. Mr. Schultz said that the decision was an ‘issue of just safety’ and that he thought Starbucks might have to put policies in place that limit the number of non-customers who come into its stores,” the paper added.

In other words, because of rising crime, Starbucks had at the time considered nixing the policy. Yet as of June 2023, the policy remained.

Vivek Saxena
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