Reinstated Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah took a victory lap on social media after the paper was ordered to give her back pay. (Julia Reinhart/Getty Images)
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A columnist took a victory lap Tuesday as The Washington Post was ordered to give her back pay after she challenged her firing last year.
“POV: Channeling my inner Rihanna because I won my case against the @washingtonpost — and they owe me a year’s worth of back pay,” Karen Attiah wrote on X while sharing a video of her dancing to a Rihanna song.
In August, an arbitrator ordered the Post to reinstate her employment and give her back pay, saying the paper “did not have good and sufficient cause” and that it “violated” her labor agreement.
The Washington Post was ordered by an arbitrator to reinstate columnist Karen Attiah after she was fired for social media posts about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
“I’m still processing everything, but overall, I am happy I have been vindicated and ordered reinstated with back pay,” Attiah told Fox News Digital. “But in the meantime, I just wanted to put on a pretty gold dress, vibe to Rihanna’s music and eat cake! I wanted to be as loud about the win as possible so that other journalists will not be afraid to speak the truth.”
Attiah said her post was inspired by a video she liked from her party and “wanted to show that I take celebrating this huge win — for me, the Guild [the Washington Post union] and for journalism — very seriously!”
It remains unclear whether she will formally return to work despite the arbitrator’s order. A spokesperson for The Washington Post told Fox News Digital the paper respects the arbitration process and declined to comment further.
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Attiah sparked outrage last year for her posts about slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk on the liberal social media platform Bluesky following his assassination.
“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.’”
Attiah slammed Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk following his assassination on the liberal social media platform Bluesky. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images)
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.”
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The Washington Post was forced to reinstate Attiah after an arbitrator found she was fired without cause. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg)
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.
