The court ruled in favor of a former Starbucks employee, awarding her a total of $25.6 million for her wrongful termination and the damages that ensued.

A former Starbucks employee who sued the company, claiming she and other white employees were unfairly punished and that she was wrongfully fired after the high-profile 2018 arrests of two black men.

After a six-day trial, a jury in New Jersey unanimously ruled in favor of Shannon Phillips, a former Starbucks regional manager, concluding that her termination was motivated by race, in breach of federal as well as state anti-discrimination laws.

According to Console Mattiacci Law, which represents Phillips, $600,000 in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages were given to Phillips on Monday. The legal team added that a judge might also award $3 million for lost wages and attorney's fees.

In April 2018, a manager at a Starbucks in Philadelphia called the police on two black men who were loitering without placing an order. Later, the men were let go without being charged. Phillips was in charge of regional operations in Philadelphia at the time of the incident, but she had nothing to do with the arrests.

In the 2019 lawsuit, Phillips claimed that Starbucks had instructed her to place an unrelated white manager on administrative leave. She claimed that after objecting to the manager being put on leave, she was fired less than a month later.

At the time, Starbucks refuted the accusations, claiming that the business required a crisis-management expert.