Washington Post ordered to rehire columnist Karen Attiah who called Charlie Kirk white man that espoused violence

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, A...