--- title: "An arbitrator has ordered the Washington Post to reinstate Karen Attiah" description: "The columnist was dismissed in September 2025 over posts about Charlie Kirk made after his assassination. The arbitrator found the paper had not established gross misconduct and had breached its labour agreement. Back pay was awarded." category: "Culture" category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/culture author: "Jasmine Howard" published: 2026-08-24T22:36:06.000Z updated: 2026-08-24T22:36:06.000Z canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/an-arbitrator-has-ordered-the-washington-post-to-reinstate-karen-attiah tags: ["media", "washington-post", "press-freedom", "employment", "united-states"] --- # An arbitrator has ordered the Washington Post to reinstate Karen Attiah The columnist was dismissed in September 2025 over posts about Charlie Kirk made after his assassination. The arbitrator found the paper had not established gross misconduct and had breached its labour agreement. Back pay was awarded. An arbitrator has ordered the Washington Post to reinstate the columnist Karen Attiah, almost a year after it dismissed her, [Al Jazeera reports](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/24/washington-post-ordered-to-rehire-columnist-fired-over-charlie-kirk-posts). The decision, by Sarah Miller Espinosa, was described in documents obtained by Attiah's lawyers and reported by US outlets. Back pay was awarded. Attiah was fired in September 2025 after posting on Bluesky, following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, about remarks Kirk had made in the past concerning Black women. The Post's termination letter said the posts breached its social media policy, which requires employees to keep their conduct online respectful and not to damage the integrity of its journalism. ## What was decided, and what was not Espinosa found that "The Washington Post failed to establish the grievant engaged in gross misconduct", and that the paper had violated its labour agreement by dismissing her without adequate cause. That is a narrower finding than it may appear, and the distinction matters. An arbitrator in this posture is asked whether the employer met the standard its own contract sets for dismissal. She is not ruling on whether the posts were wise, tasteful or defensible, and this decision does not endorse them. It says the Post did not clear the bar it had agreed to. Attiah's own framing is broader. "This decision confirms what we've said from the start: I was doing my job as an opinion writer, and this was wrongful termination," she said. The first half of that sentence is her characterization; the second is what the arbitrator found. ## Why the mechanism is the story Arbitration under a collective agreement is why this ended in reinstatement rather than in a public argument about a columnist's judgment. Most American journalists dismissed over something they published on a personal account have no such route. Where a contract sets a cause standard and provides for arbitration, the employer must demonstrate the conduct meets it, before a neutral party, on the record. Where it does not, the decision is final when it is made. That is worth understanding whichever view one takes of the posts themselves, and readers will take different ones. Kirk had been assassinated days earlier, which is the context in which the Post judged the posts damaging and in which many readers judged them so. ## What we could not establish We could not establish what Attiah's posts actually said, whether the Post will comply or appeal, the amount of back pay, whether a union brought the grievance, or whether Attiah intends to return. We have not seen the arbitration decision, which reaches us at two removes, and we verified this account from a single publication. The Post has not commented publicly on the ruling in this account. ## Sources - [Washington Post ordered to rehire Karen Attiah after Charlie Kirk posts](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/24/washington-post-ordered-to-rehire-columnist-fired-over-charlie-kirk-posts)