Washington Post ordered to rehire columnist Karen – Business News
An arbitrator has ordered the Washington Post to rehire Karen Attiah, the opinion columnist who was fired final September after she blasted Charlie Kirk as “a white man that espoused violence” the day of his brutal assassination.
In a written resolution Thursday, arbitrator Sarah Miller Espinosa stated WaPo “did not have good and sufficient cause” to fire the scribe and “violated” its labor settlement with the controversial columnist.
Espinosa ordered the legacy newspaper to compensate Attiah with back pay and misplaced advantages.
The Washington Post was ordered to rehire columnist Karen Attiah (above). Instagram/@karenattiah
“This decision confirms what we’ve said from the start: I was doing my job as an opinion journalist, and doing that job is not misconduct,” Attiah instructed The Post in a assertion, including that she is “relieved to finally have that record set straight.”
She added that she hopes her win “sends a message to journalists and media institutions everywhere that freedom of expression is always worth fighting for.”
A spokesperson for the Washington Post stated the company respects the arbitration course of and declined to remark additional.
The resolution – which is binding, in accordance to WaPo’s labor settlement – caps off a yearlong battle after Attiah argued a slew of controversial social media posts she fired off the day of Kirk’s surprising killing didn’t violate company coverage.
On Sept. 10, 2025, Attiah wrote in a Bluesky post: “Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men that espouse hatred and violence.”
In one other post that day, she wrote: “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is … not the same as violence.”
Her Bluesky posts took purpose at widespread mourning from politicians and different public figures throughout social media for Kirk, the conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA who was gunned down at a college occasion in Utah on the age of 31.
The late conservative activist Charlie Kirk (above) at a Utah college occasion on Sept. 10, 2025, moments earlier than his assassination. Getty Images
The following day, Attiah – who spent 11 years at WaPo as a columnist centered on race and gender points, and was the final remaining full-time black individual on the opinion masthead – acquired a termination letter from the company.
Wayne Connell, WaPo’s chief HR officer, wrote that Attiah’s Bluesky posts had violated the company’s social media insurance policies, harmed “the integrity of our organization” and doubtlessly endangered “the physical safety of our staff.”
“The poor judgment exhibited by your public comments regarding Charlie Kirk arise against the backdrop of documented performance concerns, which have been raised with you,” the letter added.
In August 2025, Status e-newsletter had reported that Attiah had a tense assembly with Adam O’Neal – then the newly-hired, right-leaning opinion editor who was tapped by Jeff Bezos to revamp the part with a concentrate on “free markets and personal liberties.”
The Washington Post despatched Karen Attiah a termination letter on Sept. 11, 2025. Getty Images
Last month, O’Neal introduced he was stepping down much less than a yr into the position. It’s simply the most recent hit to the opinion part amid Bezos’ efforts to add more conservative writers to its ranks, as a string of left-leaning journos exited the paper and dependable readers canceled their subscriptions.
Attiah’s case towards the WaPo went to arbitration in June and included testimony from her, O’Neal and Connell. Attiah was represented by legal professionals from Democracy Defenders Action, a nonprofit co-founded by lawyer Norman Eisen, and the Washington-Baltimore News Guild.
O’Neal testified that he turned conscious of Attiah’s social media posts on the morning of Sept. 11, 2025 and texted Connell: “Karen’s social media feed yesterday and today is beyond the pale – completely unacceptable for someone associated with Opinions,” the choice stated.
Later that morning, O’Neal and Connell met with Will Lewis – then the chief government of the paper, who has additionally since resigned – and all three of them agreed “that termination was the appropriate response,” with Lewis having “final say,” O’Neal testified.
Attiah defended her social media posts during her testimony, saying they had been half of her work as an opinion columnist “commenting on our discourse on political violence” and “gun violence” in America, the choice stated.
Eisen, one of Attiah’s legal professionals, known as the choice “a thunderous victory for Karen Attiah, an award-winning journalist fired for doing her job, over Bezos’ Washington Post.”
“The Post tried to pass off retaliation as discipline, but the rule of law has exposed it for what it truly is: wrongful termination,” he added.
