Noteworthy cases
Among Cooper's notable cases in the U.S. district court is the criminal case of Ahmed Abu Khattala,who is charged with orchestrating the 2012 Benghazi attack. [5] [10] In a pretrial evidentiary ruling,Cooper denied Khattala's motion to suppress statements he made to FBI agents while detained on the Navy ship USS New York en route to the United States,a significant victory for federal prosecutors. [11] Trial began in October 2017. [10]
In 2014,Cooper rejected a challenge brought by various pet-breeding groups against the United States Department of Agriculture. The challengers sought to invalidate Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service regulations affecting certain pet breeders who make Internet sales. Cooper upheld the rules in a "pun-filled" decision. [12]
In 2015,Cooper issued a 21-page decision dismissing a suit brought by the Florida counties of Indian River and Martin seeking to block the All Aboard Florida railway project (later known as Brightline) on environmental grounds. Cooper ruled that the counties lacked standing to pursue their claim,and wrote:"The Court is mindful of the vigorous debate in Central and South Florida over whether the express railway should be built. But the relative merits of the project are not for this Court to decide." [13]
Cooper presided over a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit,Shapiro v. CIA,filed in 2014 by an MIT graduate student against the CIA and NSA. The student sought to learn if the United States government was involved in Nelson Mandela's arrest and imprisonment in 1962,and filed suit against the agencies after each denied his FOIA request. (The CIA asserted that the search would be "unreasonably burdensome" and the NSA gave a Glomar response,refusing to confirm or deny whether the agency had records involving Mandela). In 2016,Cooper denied the CIA's motion to dismiss,rejecting the agency's argument that the student had not given sufficient detail about the records he was seeking. In the same opinion,Cooper ruled that the NSA could give a Glomar response with respect to intelligence records,but not on non-intelligence records. [14] [15]
In 2015,Cooper heard a petition for a preliminary injunction filed by the Committee of 100 on the Federal City,which sought to block CSX Transportation's reconstruction of the Virginia Avenue Tunnel in Southeast Washington,D.C. [16] Cooper denied the petition. [17]
In 2016,Cooper issued a decision in a racial discrimination case brought against Airbnb. Cooper granted the company's motion to compel arbitration based on a mandatory arbitration clause in the website's terms of use. [18] [19]
In 2021,Cooper dismissed [20] a defamation suit filed by Giorgi Rtskhiladze,a U.S. citizen born in the Republic of Georgia. [21] Rtskhiladze is a friend of Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen. Rtskhiladze was unhappy with the way he was portrayed in Footnote 112 in the Mueller report,so in 2020 he sued Robert Mueller, [22] and Cooper dismissed the case.
In 2024,Cooper held veteran reporter Catherine Herridge in civil contempt for refusing to reveal her source,saying that Chen's need for the information overcame Herridge's First Amendment protections. This has been widely criticized by journalists and First Amendment advocates. [23] [24] [25]
In February 2025,Cooper denied a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit filed by a federal employees' union challenging mass firings of federal employees by the Trump administration,allowing the firings to proceed. [26] [27] [28]
In May 2026,Cooper ruled that the attempted renaming and extended closure of the Kennedy Center was unlawful and ordered the center to resume using the original name and stay open. [29]
