An arbitrator has ordered the Washington Post to rehire Karen Attiah, the opinion columnist who was fired last September after she blasted Charlie Kirk as “a white man that espoused violence” the day of his brutal assassination.
In a written decision Thursday, arbitrator Sarah Miller Espinosa said WaPo “did not have good and sufficient cause” to fire the scribe and “violated” its labor agreement with the controversial columnist.
Espinosa ordered the legacy newspaper to compensate Attiah with back pay and lost benefits.
“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 told The Post in a statement, adding 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 said the company respects the arbitration process and declined to comment further.
The decision – which is binding, according to WaPo’s labor agreement – caps off a yearlong battle after Attiah argued a slew of controversial social media posts she fired off the day of Kirk’s shocking killing did not violate company policy.
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 another 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 aim at widespread mourning from politicians and other public figures across social media for Kirk, the conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA who was gunned down at a university event in Utah at the age of 31.
The following day, Attiah – who spent 11 years at WaPo as a columnist focused on race and gender issues, and was the last remaining full-time black person on the opinion masthead – received 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 policies, harmed “the integrity of our organization” and potentially 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 newsletter had reported that Attiah had a tense meeting with Adam O’Neal – then the newly-hired, right-leaning opinion editor who was tapped by Jeff Bezos to revamp the section with a focus on “free markets and personal liberties.”
Last month, O’Neal announced he was stepping down less than a year into the role. It’s just the latest hit to the opinion section amid Bezos’ efforts to add more conservative writers to its ranks, as a string of left-leaning journos exited the paper and loyal readers canceled their subscriptions.
Attiah’s case against the WaPo went to arbitration in June and included testimony from her, O’Neal and Connell. Attiah was represented by lawyers from Democracy Defenders Action, a nonprofit co-founded by lawyer Norman Eisen, and the Washington-Baltimore News Guild.
O’Neal testified that he became aware 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 decision said.
Later that morning, O’Neal and Connell met with Will Lewis – then the chief executive of the paper, who has also 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 were part of her work as an opinion columnist “commenting on our discourse on political violence” and “gun violence” in America, the decision said.
Eisen, one of Attiah’s lawyers, called the decision “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.
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