Viral ‘Central Park Karen’ lawsuit fail

The woman dubbed “Central Park Karen” after accusing a bird-watcher of threatening her in 2020 has lost a lawsuit against her former employer, claiming she was illegally fired.

‘Central Park Karen’ Amy Cooper has lost a lawsuit against her former employer. Pictures: NY Post/Twitter

Amy Cooper, the white woman dubbed “Central Park Karen” after accusing a black bird-watcher of threatening her in 2020, lost a lawsuit against her former employer claiming she was illegally fired and portrayed as a racist.

US District Judge Ronnie Abrams rejected Ms Cooper’s claim on Wednesday that she was defamed when ex-employer Franklin Templeton, a holding company, axed her one day after the viral altercation in Central Park, the NY Post reports.

Ms Cooper claimed that Franklin Templeton and its chief executive Jenny Johnson perpetuated her image as a “privileged white female ‘Karen’” by making public statements about firing her after conducting an investigation into the incident.

In May 2020, Ms Cooper went viral after video showed her yelling at birder Christian Cooper and calling the police to claim an “African American man” was “threatening” her while she was walking her dog in Central Park.

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Amy Cooper, dubbed ‘Central Park Karen’, went viral for yelling at Christian Cooper in Central Park. Picture: NY Post/Twitter

Her suit, filed in May 2021, argued her call to cops had nothing to do with Christian’s race – but rather because the “overzealous birdwatcher” selected her as a “target” in a feud between bird and dog lovers.

Ms Cooper was charged by the Manhattan district attorney in July 2020 with falsely reporting an incident in the third degree. The charge was ultimately thrown out by prosecutors after she attended therapy sessions on racial bias, but she still lost her job.

Amy Cooper lost her job after the footage of her yelling at the African-American man went viral. Picture: NY Post/Twitter

She had worked at Franklin Templeton as an insurance portfolio manager since 2015.

Ms Cooper claimed in her suit that her former employer’s statements, which received over 200,000 likes on Twitter, implied that the company had uncovered details about her alleged racism not evident from the video, but the Manhattan judge disagreed.

“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,” rendering the defendants’ statements “inactionable as pure opinion”, Judge Abrams wrote in his decision.

This article originally appeared on the NY Post and was reproduced with permission