Epstein famous that Sonmez alleged The Post reassigned her out of issues “it had an advocate covering an issue she experienced.” However, that meant the corporate didn’t take motion due to her sufferer standing, he wrote, however relatively to uphold a picture of unbiased news protection.
“News media companies have the right to adopt policies that protect not only the fact but also the appearance of impartiality,” the choose wrote.
He in contrast the editors’ determination to hypotheticals resembling protecting a reporter who had spoken out concerning the private affect of a relative’s homicide from protecting tales about violent crime, or a reporter who had campaigned for a political social gathering from protecting elections.
Sonmez’s lawyer, Sundeep Hora, stated Friday they plan to enchantment the ruling, “as we strongly disagree with the Judge’s basis for dismissing this important case.”
Sonmez, who first labored for The Post from 2010 to 2013, rejoined the corporate in 2018 as a breaking-news reporter for the politics workers. That identical yr, in line with court docket filings, she made public feedback describing her sexual assault a yr earlier, including that she “stand[s] in solidarity” with one other alleged sufferer of the identical man. The Post barred her for 2 months from protecting tales involving the #MeToo motion and the sexual assault allegations against Brett M. Kavanaugh as he underwent the affirmation course of for the U.S. Supreme Court, in line with her criticism, after which quickly barred her from the topic space practically a yr later, after Sonmez spoke out critically about an article that described her assault.
Then in January 2020, in line with her go well with, the corporate briefly positioned Sonmez on administrative depart after she tweeted, hours after the loss of life of former NBA star Kobe Bryant, concerning the felony fees of rape, later dropped, he had confronted years earlier.
Sonmez filed go well with in July 2021, saying that she suffered adversarial private {and professional} penalties on account of the corporate’s actions. Her go well with named a number of present and former Washington Post editors, together with former government editor Martin Baron, who has since retired, in addition to senior managing editor Cameron Barr; managing editors Steven Ginsberg and Tracy Grant; monetary editor Lori Montgomery; and senior politics editor Peter Wallsten.
A spokesperson for The Washington Post declined to touch upon the go well with’s dismissal. Baron, in an e mail, stated that he’s “grateful for a legal process that allowed the claims in this lawsuit to be evaluated objectively.”
In his ruling, Epstein wrote that Sonmez’s personal account of what occurred at The Post indicated that the corporate didn’t have a difficulty along with her historical past as a sufferer of sexual assault “until she made public statements that could be perceived as associating herself with the #MeToo movement as a victim herself.”
But the choose made some extent of closing off one particular authorized technique tried by The Post to battle her lawsuit, which was to problem it on freedom-of-speech grounds.
The Post had tried to have the lawsuit dismissed underneath the town’s anti-SLAPP regulation, a measure designed to guard organizations from expensive litigation meant to stifle public advocacy. The newspaper’s attorneys argued that the editors’ determination about whether or not to assign a reporter to a selected story was “an exercise of editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment.”
But Epstein wrote that the town statute performs a extra restricted position in defending advocacy, not protecting the identical whole vary because the First Amendment. The Post’s personnel determination, he stated, “is not actual speech or expressive conduct.”