Washington Post ordered to reinstate columnist Karen Attiah after being terminated over Charlie Kirk posts

The Washington Post was ordered to reinstate columnist Karen Attiah after she was fired last year for social media posts she made after Charlie Kirk's assassination.

Sarah Miller Espinosa, the arbitrator overseeing Attiah's legal challenge against The Post, said the paper "did not have good and sufficient cause" and that it "violated" her labor agreement, according to The New York Times, which first reported on Espinosa's ruling last Thursday.

"The Washington Post failed to establish the grievant engaged in gross misconduct," Espinosa concluded.

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Attiah told The Times she is "relieved to finally have that record set straight," adding, "This decision confirms what we’ve said from the start: I was doing my job as an opinion writer, and this was wrongful termination."

The columnist announced her legal victory, saying on X, "The Washington Post fired me last year for speaking the truth after Charlie Kirk's killing. I fought back. I'm happy to announce: I won my case against the Washington Post. They have been ordered to reinstate me immediately."

"In general, if someone reveals themselves to be a ghoul then companies should be able to fire them," Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet told Fox News Digital. 

A spokesperson for The Washington Post said the paper respects the arbitration process and declined to comment further. Attiah didn't immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

Attiah sparked outrage for her posts about the slain conservative icon on the liberal social media platform Bluesky.

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"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," Attiah wrote at the time. In a separate post, she wrote, "Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for White men who espouse hatred and violence.’"

Critics also slammed Attiah for misquoting Kirk in another post, attributing to him saying, "Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a White person's slot."

On a July 2023 episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show," Kirk actually said, "If we would have said three weeks ago [...] that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama, and Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative-action picks, we would have been called racist. But now they're comin' out and they're saying it for us! They're comin' out, and they're saying, 'I'm only here because of affirmative action.' Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a White person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously."

Following the backlash, Attiah revealed she had been fired by The Post, saying in a termination letter her posts were "unacceptable" and "gross misconduct."

Attiah filed a legal challenge against The Post over her termination last fall, and previously announced in June that she and the paper would enter arbitration.