An arbitrator has ruled that The Washington Post must reinstate Karen Attiah, the Black opinion writer who was fired last year over social media posts about violent white men in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's killing.

In a ruling issued Thursday, arbitrator Sarah Miller Espinosa found that the newspaper lacked sufficient cause to terminate Attiah, who at the time of her dismissal was the last Black full-time member of the Post's opinion desk. Espinosa also ordered the paper to award Attiah full back pay and lost benefits.

Kirk, who rose from teenage conservative campus activist to become a top podcaster and ally of President Donald Trump, was shot and killed on Sept. 10 during a public appearance at Utah Valley University. He was 31. Kirk launched Turning Point USA in 2012 and made provocative statements about race, gender, and politics. He was critical of the Black Lives Matter movement on college campuses and called George Floyd — the Black man whose 2020 murder at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked protests — a "scumbag."

His death elicited a torrent of commentary, both supportive and critical, and some who spoke out against him in the days after the killing faced sanctions or dismissal at work.

After Kirk's killing, Attiah, the founding global opinion editor for the Post and the newspaper's only Black female opinion writer, made several posts to her Bluesky account.

"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," one post read.

"If anything, the rush to coddle violent white men is self-protective — that we know they are not used to feeling vulnerable and mortal — and will react violently out of fear. And we will all suffer," read another post.

On Sept. 11, Attiah was emailed a termination letter accusing her of "gross misconduct."

"Your public comments on social media regarding the death of Charlie Kirk violate the Post's social media policies, harm the integrity of our organization, and potentially endanger the physical safety of our staff," the letter read.

But following a June 4 hearing, Espinosa found that the newspaper failed to establish that Attiah "engaged in gross misconduct" and that the Post "did not have good and sufficient cause to terminate" her employment — a violation of the collective bargaining agreement with the newspaper's union. Grievance arbitration is the binding process through which union contracts are enforced, and the just-cause standard at stake is a workplace protection most U.S. workers, who are generally employed at will, do not have.

"After wrongfully firing me last year, an independent arbitrator has ordered the @washingtonpost to reinstate me immediately, with back pay," Attiah wrote Monday in an Instagram post. "It's been a year-long fight, but this is a victory for journalists everywhere. More to come soon."

The Democracy Defenders Fund, which represented Attiah along with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, said the ruling marks a landmark moment for press freedom, "confirming that corporate media institutions cannot use retaliatory discipline to silence journalists who address uncomfortable truths."

The Post said in a statement that it respects the arbitration process but declined to comment further, leaving unanswered how the reinstatement would be carried out.

The ruling also arrives amid wider turmoil at the paper, which Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought in 2013. Under his ownership, the Post has drawn criticism for its October 2024 decision to stop making presidential endorsements — a break from decades of practice that prompted a wave of subscription cancellations — and for a February 2025 directive from Bezos narrowing the opinion section's focus to "personal liberties and free markets," after which opinion editor David Shipley resigned.

At the time, Attiah's firing was among dozens of others across various professions stemming from comments about Kirk's assassination, igniting a debate over First Amendment rights as Trump vowed retribution for remarks he considers disparaging.

The National Association of Black Journalists, the nation's largest professional advocacy organization for journalists of color, said at the time that Attiah's firing had "raised an alarm about the erosion of Black voices across the media."

During the organization's annual convention this month in Atlanta, the NABJ gave The Post a "Thumbs Down Award" because the newspaper has laid off Black journalists and eliminated race and culture beats.

"When the NABJ raises concerns about the treatment of Black journalists, we do so because the decisions news organizations make have real consequences for our members, our profession and the communities we serve," NABJ President Errin Haines said Monday in a statement supporting Attiah.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.