A decide in Washington, D.C., dismissed on Thursday a discrimination lawsuit in opposition to The Washington Put up filed by a reporter on the paper.
The reporter, Felicia Sonmez, accused the paper in July of discriminating in opposition to her by barring her from reporting on tales associated to sexual assault after she publicly recognized herself as a sufferer of assault.
The lawsuit named The Put up as a defendant, in addition to its former government editor Martin Baron and 5 different prime editors.
Choose Anthony C. Epstein of the Superior Courtroom of the District of Columbia dismissed the case with prejudice, which suggests the costs can’t be refiled. He mentioned in his resolution that Ms. Sonmez had not made “a believable declare that The Put up took antagonistic employment actions, or created a hostile work atmosphere, due to her intercourse or standing as a sufferer of sexual assault.”
Ms. Sonmez’s lawyer, Sundeep Hora, mentioned they deliberate to attraction the choice. “We’re dissatisfied within the ruling, and we strongly disagree with the ruling,” he mentioned.
Mr. Baron mentioned in an e-mail on Thursday: “I’m grateful for a authorized course of that allowed the claims on this lawsuit to be evaluated objectively.”
A spokeswoman for The Put up declined to remark.
Ms. Sonmez joined The Put up in 2018 as a nationwide political reporter. She mentioned that inside a couple of months her editors forbade her to cowl the sexual misconduct allegations in opposition to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, on the time a Supreme Courtroom nominee, after Ms. Sonmez issued an announcement about being sexually assaulted by one other journalist. (The journalist has denied the allegation.)
A couple of 12 months later, Ms. Sonmez mentioned, she was barred for a second time from protecting tales regarding sexual assault after she once more spoke publicly about her assault, this time to request a correction to an article in Purpose journal coping with the allegations in opposition to the person she accused.
That protection ban on Ms. Sonmez was lifted solely after she publicly pleaded along with her editors to take action, she mentioned in her lawsuit. Being denied the power to cowl newsworthy tales and having to elucidate the ban to her editors harmed her profession, she mentioned, and prompted her financial loss and psychological and emotional misery.
Choose Epstein famous in his ruling that Ms. Sonmez had saved her job after her public statements and had not said that she was given “second-rate tales.” in the course of the two protection bans.
“Her solely criticism about her assignments in the course of the bans is that they didn’t embrace tales with #MeToo-related ramifications,” he continued.
He added that The Put up had attributed the protection bans to her public statements, to not her gender or standing as a sufferer.
“Certainly, a information publication has a constitutionally protected proper to undertake and implement insurance policies meant to guard public belief in its impartiality and objectivity,” the decide wrote.
The Put up, as a part of its argument that it had not damaged the legislation, had requested that the case be dismissed underneath laws often called Anti-SLAPP, which is meant to guard speech. The Put up had argued that its selections on which tales Ms. Sonmez was barred from protecting had been a part of its editorial judgment protected by the First Modification.
Choose Epstein mentioned selections about how one can assign reporters weren’t lined by Anti-SLAPP laws as a result of they weren’t “a type of speech.”
