The Washington Post has been ordered to reinstate an opinion columnist after she was fired regarding fabricated online posts about Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, in the aftermath of his death.
A private arbitrator ordered the newspaper to give Karen Attiah her job back, Reuters reported Monday.
The outlet continued:
Private arbitrator Sarah Miller Espinosa found the newspaper “did not have good and sufficient cause” to terminate Attiah and had “violated” its labor agreement. “The Washington Post failed to establish the grievant engaged in gross misconduct,” she wrote.
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The dispute began after Attiah’s posts on social media platform Bluesky following Kirk’s September 2025 assassination, including one in which she noted Kirk’s past comments on Black women.
The Post had said in its termination letter that Attiah’s posts violated its social media policy, which requires employees’ online activity to be respectful and not undermine the integrity of the newspaper’s journalism.
Attiah announced she won her case to get her job back in a social media post, saying she was fired for speaking the “truth” after Kirk was killed:
Days after Kirk, a Christian conservative activist, husband, and father, was assassinated during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University on September 10, Breitbart News’s John Nolte wrote he believed Attiah was fired for several posts including one that was a “fake quote.”
Attiah attributed the quote “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot,” to Kirk, per screenshots included in Nolte’s article.
Lead Stories fact-checked the quote on September 16:
Did the late Charlie Kirk say “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously” as social media posts claim? No, that’s not a precise quote: Attacking affirmative action, Kirk slammed by name four prominent liberal Black women. On his podcast, he specifically criticized Rep. Shirley Jackson Lee, D-Texas, TV host Joy Reid, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and attorney and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
The claim that he said this of all Black women circulated on social media, including a September 10, 2025 Bluesky post (archived here) where it was published by the karenattiah account with no comment or explanation.
The article highlighted Kirk’s full quote, noting he made the comments not long after the U.S. Supreme Court ended affirmative action when it came to college and university admissions:
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.
Watch the clip of Kirk speaking here where he also highlighted a video of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) who stated, “But I rise today as a clear recipient of affirmative action, particularly in higher education. I may have been admitted on affirmative action, both in terms of being a woman, and a woman of color. But I can declare that I did not graduate on affirmative action. This is my personal story.”
Several black commentators have defended Kirk:
The Post was ordered to reinstate Attiah with back pay, the Reuters article said.
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