Month: June 2023

A federal jury on Monday found in favor of former Starbucks regional director Shannon Phillips, who sued the company for wrongfully firing her, claiming she was terminated for being White. Phillips, who worked for Starbucks for about 13 years and managed a region of stores in the area, was fired after the arrest of two Black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks in April 2018.

The New Jersey jury returned a verdict of $25.6 million, including $25 million for punitive damages and $600,000 in compensatory damages. The jury ruled unanimously after a six-day trial, the lawyers said, noting that Phillips will also be seeking back and front pay.

Phillips was fired in 2018 in the wake of two Black men getting arrested after sitting at a table at the Starbucks Spruce Street location in Philadelphia to wait for a business associate. The men settled their case against Starbucks for an undisclosed sum and also settled with the city of Philadelphia. After those arrests in 2018, Starbucks closed all 8,000 Starbuck’s U.S. locations for racial-bias training.

Phillips’ attorney said she was a scapegoat for the company to show action was being taken over the arrest of the two men. Phillips said in court documents 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.” Phillips alleged: “I was terminated because I am White. If I was Black, I would not have been terminated. I was terminated because I complained of and objected to race discrimination.”

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On Wednesday, grand jurors indicted Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely, while occurred while both men were riding the subway in New York City.

Penny, a 24-year-old Marine veteran, was indicted on a second-degree manslaughter charge in the May 1 confrontation with Neely, a homeless man known subway busker who often performed as Michael Jackson. Penny and Neely were on an F train in Manhattan when Neely began engaging in “somewhat aggressive speech,” and allegedly telling passengers that “he was hungry, he was thirsty, that he didn’t care about anything, he didn’t care about going to jail, he didn’t care that he gets a big life sentence.” A portion of the confrontation was recorded by witnesses, which appeared to show Penny putting Neely in a chokehold on the train’s floor. Neely was unconscious when first responders reached him at the Broadway-Lafayette Street/Bleecker Street Station, before he was pronounced dead at a hospital. The city’s medical examiner said Neely died from “compression of neck (chokehold)” and declared his manner of death a homicide.

Neely’s family said the he struggled with his mental health for years, specially in the years since his mother was murdered in 2007. Penny, a white man, said in a videotaped statement on Sunday that he acted to protect himself and other passengers when he confronted Neely, who was Black: “I didn’t see a Black man threatening passengers. I saw a man threatening passengers.”

Editorial credit: Ron Adar / Shutterstock.com