On Wednesday (Sept. 21), U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams rejected Amy Cooper’s claims that Franklin Templeton, an investment management company, unjustly fired and defamed her following the 2020 Central Park incident that went viral.
Cooper claimed that the company and chief executive Jenny Johnson painted her as a “privileged white female ‘Karen’” by making public statements about her termination.
“Central Park Karen” earned her moniker in May 2020 after a widely-circulated video showed her yelling at birdwatcher Christian Cooper and reporting to police that the “African American man” threatened her while she was walking her dog at the New York park.
In July 2020, Amy Cooper was charged with false reporting of an incident in the third degree by a Manhattan district attorney. The charge was ultimately dropped, but Cooper still lost her job at Franklin Templeton, where she had been employed since 2015.
She filed her suit in May 2021, arguing that race had nothing to do with her calling the cops on the birdwatcher.
Cooper also alleged that her former employer’s viral statement about her firing suggested that the company had uncovered details about her alleged racism not seen in the video.
However, Abrams disagreed with her claims.
“The contents of the viral video, as well as the dialogue surrounding it both in the media and on social media, were already matters of public knowledge,” the judge said, noting the defendants’ statements were “inactionable as pure opinion.”
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