Washington Post politics reporter Felicia Sonmez sued the paper and several of its current and former editors for discriminating against her as a victim of sexual assault.
In a suit filed Wednesday in D.C. Superior Court, Sonmez said she was not allowed to report on sexual misconduct after she issued a statement in September 2018 on the resignation of a Los Angeles Times journalist who she said had assaulted her in China. He has said what happened was consensual.
Sonmez said in that statement that she was grateful the Times took her allegations seriously but criticized how it handled the investigation, and said that the response of institutions is essential to combatting sexual misconduct.
She said the Post then barred her from writing about Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice. She said Cameron Barr, the Post’s managing editor, told her she had “taken a side on the issue’” of sexual assault by talking about her own experience publicly, while Steven Ginsburg, the Post’s national editor, told her that “it would present ‘the appearance of a conflict of interest’” for her to report on sexual misconduct.
