A former editor who was fired from her position at the New York Post in September sued her former employer Monday, claiming her dismissal was discriminatory and stemmed from her complaints surrounding an editorial cartoon that critics said likened U.S. President Barack Obama to a dead chimpanzee, The Associated Press reported Tuesday. Sandra Guzman served as an associate editor at the Post since 2003.

The suit puts the magazine's parent company, media conglomerate News Corp., at the centre of yet another legal controversy this week. The Post maintains Guzman's position was eliminated because " the section she edited was discontinued due to a decline in advertising sales," according to a statement.
Tempo magazine, a monthly insert in the Post, was apparently designed to increase readership by Latinos, which rose 40 percent under Sandra Guzman's leadership, The Courthouse News Service reported yesterday.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan), seeks reinstatement and an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages for the newspaper's alleged violation of state and federal labour law. The complaint does not specify how much Guzman earned at the time of her dismissal but states that three high-ranking white males were hired at six-figure incomes during the same period.

Most of the Post's executives are white males, which Guzman said created a work atmosphere "permeated with racist and sexist conduct and comments towards employees of colour and women." The cartoon, she said, was "a racist, offensive and dangerous cartoon suggesting the assassination of President Barack Obama."