Whatever happened to just taking the L? Whether it be the former president and his acolytes or the Central Park Karen, there’s an alarming lack of folks going, “you know what, that’s on me, I fucked up.” One would hope a year was enough time for Amy Cooper to realize why she was wrong, why she faced the consequences she did, and to simply try to grow from her very public display of white-woman-ing.
Yeah, nah, that didn’t happen.
Instead, Cooper has filed a lawsuit against her former employer alleging that they discriminated against her when they fired her after the video of her threatening to call the cops on Christian Cooper (no relation) went viral.
According to CNN, Cooper was fired last May from financial services firm Franklin Templeton as a result of the viral video. If you don’t remember, Christian Cooper was birdwatching in Central Park’s Ramble area when he saw Amy Cooper had her dog off its leash. The rules of the Ramble state that dogs must be on a leash at all times. When Cooper tried to tell her that, Amy Cooper went Super Saiyan white woman and threatened to call the cops on Cooper because he had the audacity to go “hey, you’re not supposed to that.”
Cooper alleges in her lawsuit that Franklin Templeton didn’t launch a proper investigation into the incident and the allegations that her call to the cops was racially motivated. Cooper has repeatedly said that race didn’t play a role in her call to the police and that claim would maybe hold a little more weight if she didn’t literally say in the video “I’m taking a picture and calling the cops. I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life.”
Cooper says in the lawsuit that she called the police because she feared for her safety, which, if a Black man simply reminding you of a mundane rule makes you fear for your safety, you might be a racist.
Cooper was initially charged with filing a false report but those charges were dropped after she did court-ordered therapy. Clearly she didn’t learn much, as she’s still coming through with the fuck-shit. She claims in the suit that Franklin Templeton calling her racist actions racist was defamatory, and she’s seeking lost pay, emotional damages, and punitive damages “to be determined at trial.”
A spokesperson from the company issued a statement to CNN in response to the lawsuit. “We believe the circumstances of the situation speak for themselves and that the company responded appropriately,” spokesperson Stacey Coleman said in the statement. “We will defend against these baseless claims.”