In the frenzied, finger-pointing days following Charlie Kirk’s assassination last year, institutions across the country rushed to appease online mobs and vitriolic politicians who demanded takedowns of anyone critical of the right-wing influencer.

In the year since, courts and arbitrators have forced a growing number of institutions to answer to something much more enduring than right-wing pressure: the law.

The latest is the Washington Post, which was ordered this week to reinstate Karen Attiah, the opinion columnist it fired last year for her social media posts in the wake of Kirk’s assassination.

The decision from an independent arbitrator is a major win for Attiah, who, alongside the union that represents Post employees, spent the past year fighting her termination through a union grievance process.

“I started squealing,” Attiah said in an interview, recalling her union representative calling with the news of her win. “My first thought was like, when is the party?”

Post management fired Attiah on September 11, one day after she posted a series of comments on Bluesky about the public’s response to the Turning Point USA founder’s assassination in Utah earlier that day.

“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,” she wrote in one post. “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,” another read.

The Post argued Attiah’s comments had “harmed the paper’s reputation and integrity” and “created safety risks” for its staff. It also accused her of violating its social media policy by disparaging white men — a claim the arbitrator said was........

© Mother Jones