In the fraught, early days of the pandemic in 2020, Danielle Langan was at the top of her career at Starbucks.

She was a 20-year employee and a longtime manager who was doing her best to keep her North Brunswick store open despite the worsening virus.

Her rise in the coffee company was meteoric: supervisor at six months, manager in three years and an abundance of accolades along the way. She’d been honored with the company’s elite North Star award and her regional managers praised her work as late as March 15, 2020.

Less than a year later, in February 2021, the company fired her for alleged poor leadership and judgement, and violation of an anti-harassment standard, which was based on inaccurate comments that falsely branded her a racist, she charges in a federal lawsuit filed in 2023.

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