D.C. judge dismisses a discrimination case against The Washington Post.

A decide in Washington, D.C., dismissed on Thursday a discrimination lawsuit towards The Washington Submit filed by a reporter on the paper.

The reporter, Felicia Sonmez, accused the paper in July 2021 of discriminating towards her by barring her from reporting on tales associated to sexual assault after she had publicly recognized herself as a sufferer of assault.

The lawsuit named The Submit as a defendant, in addition to its former government editor, Martin Baron, and 5 different high editors.

Decide Anthony C. Epstein of the Superior Courtroom of the District of Columbia, in dismissing the case, stated that Ms. Sonmez had not made “a believable declare that The Submit took hostile employment actions, or created a hostile work atmosphere, due to her intercourse or standing as a sufferer of sexual assault.”

Decide Epstein wrote that “a information publication has a constitutionally protected proper to undertake and implement insurance policies supposed to guard public belief in its impartiality and objectivity.”

Ms. Sonmez’s lawyer, Sundeep Hora, stated that they deliberate to enchantment the choice.

“We’re upset within the ruling and we strongly disagree with the ruling,” he stated.

A spokeswoman for The Submit declined to remark.

Ms. Sonmez joined The Submit in 2018 as a nationwide political reporter. She stated that inside a couple of months of beginning at The Submit, her editors forbade her from overlaying the sexual misconduct allegations towards Brett Kavanaugh, a Supreme Courtroom nominee on the time, after Ms. Sonmez issued an announcement about being sexually assaulted by one other journalist. (The journalist has denied the allegations.)

A couple of yr later, Ms. Sonmez stated she was barred for a second time from overlaying tales referring to sexual assault after she once more spoke publicly about her assault, this time to request a correction to an article in Motive journal coping with the allegations towards the person she accused.

That protection ban on Ms. Sonmez was lifted solely after she publicly pleaded together with her editors to take action, she stated in her lawsuit. Being denied the flexibility to cowl newsworthy tales and having to clarify the ban to her editors had harmed her profession, she stated, and induced her financial loss and psychological and emotional misery.

Decide Epstein famous in his ruling that Ms. Sonmez had stored her job after her public statements and had not acknowledged that she had been 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.

The Submit, as a part of its argument that it had not damaged the legislation, requested that the case be dismissed beneath laws generally known as Anti-SLAPP, which is meant to guard speech. The Submit had argued that its selections on which tales Ms. Sonmez was banned from overlaying was a part of its editorial judgment protected by the First Modification.

Decide Epstein rejected that argument, saying the ban was “not speech” and due to this fact the laws didn’t apply to the case.