Clarence Cooper (judge)

American judge (born 1942)

Clarence Cooper (born May 5, 1942) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Cooper was born in Decatur, Georgia. He later moved to the city of Atlanta, where he graduated from David T. Howard High School in 1960. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1964. He received a Juris Doctor from Emory University School of Law in 1967. He is a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. Cooper received a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1978. He also received a diploma from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in connection with a research proposal he developed.

He served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1970 reaching the rank of Staff Sergeant. Cooper was assigned to the case of Whitaker v. Perdue, a federal challenge to Georgia House Bill 1059 which requires that registered sexual offenders cannot live or work within 1,000 feet from schools, school bus stops, churches, day care centers, and areas where children gather, such as parks, recreation centers, playgrounds, swimming pools, etc. In July 2006, Judge Cooper issued a restraining order barring enforcement of the law near the vicinity of bus stops. In August, he certified a class action lawsuit on behalf of all of Georgia's 11,000 registered sex offenders instead of just the eight plaintiffs. On March 30, 2007, the judge dismissed some of the plaintiff's claims from the suit, including the claim that the law represented cruel and unusual punishment; the rest of the case will go forward. Plaintiff's lawyers had until June 1, 2007, to file a new, revised complaint.

Cooper's wife, Shirley Cooper, was the first black food service coordinator for Fulton County School System. Cooper has two children.