One of the internet’s most famous ‘Karens’ has lost a lawsuit against her former employer that claimed she’d been illegally fired and portrayed as racist. Amy Cooper was dubbed “Central Park Karen” after a video of her accusing a Black bird-watcher of threatening her and calling the police went viral in 2020.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams rejected Cooper’s claims that she’d been defamed by her former employer, Franklin Templeton, when it gave her the boot in the aftermath of the viral incident. Cooper had tried to argue that the holding company and its chief executive, Jenny Johnson, had perpetuated an image of her as a “privileged white female ‘Karen’” in public statements made about her firing.
She claimed that posts made on social media implied that the company had found details of her alleged racism which weren’t shown in the video, but Abrams 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,” which made the defendants’ statements “inactionable as pure opinion,” Abrams’ decision read.
