Global Courant
By Jonathan Stamp
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A US appeals court on Thursday declined to reinstate a lawsuit brought by Amy Cooper, the white woman who became known as “Central Park Karen” after she called the police about a black bird watcher, against the employer who hired her fired. the meeting.
In a 3-0 decision, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Cooper failed to prove that Franklin Templeton illegally fired her on the basis of race or slandered her by labeling her a racist.
Cooper was an insurance portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton, a division of San Mateo, California-based Franklin Resources.
“Karen” is sometimes used as a pejorative for an entitled white woman.
The case stemmed from a May 25, 2020 video that went viral, of Cooper confronting bird watcher Christian Cooper, who is not related.
Amy Cooper said she would tell police “there’s an African-American man threatening my life” after Christian Cooper asked her to leash her dog to comply with park rules.
Franklin Templeton fired Amy Cooper the following day, saying it had conducted an internal review and that “we will not tolerate racism of any kind”.
The appeals court said that Franklin Templeton’s statements said nothing about Cooper’s race, and that if reasonable readers thought it accused her of racism, they would have considered it an “expression of opinion” based on the video.
That video, the court added, had been circulated “amid an ongoing national reckoning over systemic racism,” and had been made on the same day that a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, who was black.
Cooper’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Franklin Templeton said he was pleased with the decision. “We continue to believe that the company has responded appropriately,” it added.
The decision upheld a lower court judge’s dismissal of Cooper’s case last September.
The case is Cooper v. Franklin Templeton Investments et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, no. 22-2763.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Richard Chang and Bill Berkrot)
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