The question of whether to fire an employee because of a social media post has long existed, but recent legal battles have added more color to the conversation.
When The Washington Post fired founding Global Opinions Editor Karen Attiah for her social media posts in September 2025, the Internet caught fire, with Attiah’s Substack post adding fuel to the flames.
This month, an arbitrator ordered the newspaper to reinstate Attiah, ruling that the publication did not have sufficient cause to terminate Attiah and that the Post violated its agreement with the union. Along with reinstatement, the arbitrator also ordered the Post to award Attiah full back pay and lost benefits from the past year.
The Post’s firing of Attiah is far from the only instance of tension — and subsequent legal action — around workplace social media policies. Attiah’s Bluesky posts were made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, an event that had a distinct effect on employers’ approach to policing their employees’ social media.
Before Kirk’s passing, employee speech around the Israel-Hamas war had caused friction in the workplace. Meta faced a lawsuit alleging that it censored a Muslim worker’s speech on the topic; Intel, also, faced a now-dismissed lawsuit by an Israeli former VP over alleged pro-Hamas posts.
In an op-ed for HR Dive, an employer-side attorney who focuses on the First Amendment,Title IX and other constitutional issues, highlighted the often-divisive nature of employee political speech on social media and laid out ways for HR managers to assess the situation — keeping in mind legal guardrails such as the National Labor Relations Act.
As Attiah waits for the Post’s call, here are several more case studies in contentious social media policies. Sometimes, the rift isn’t caused by big political posts, but employees TikTok dancing in their work uniforms or linking back to their OnlyFans page.