He served in the
United States Army from 1968 to 1970 reaching the rank of
Staff Sergeant. and inactive senior status in September 2021.
Cases Cooper ordered an Atlanta school system to remove stickers from textbooks which call the
theory of evolution "a theory, not a fact." In the case
Selman v. Cobb County School District, he ruled that these stickers are an endorsement of religion and as such violate the
Establishment Clause of the
US Constitution. 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. ==Personal life==