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The U.S. Postal Service cannot be sued for damages for intentionally failing to deliver mail, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision released Tuesday.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled the government’s sovereign immunity bars claims for undelivered mail.
“The United States enjoys sovereign immunity and cannot be sued without its consent,” Thomas wrote, citing the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) granting “sovereign immunity for a wide range of claims about mail.”
“Specifically, the FTCA’s postal exception retains sovereign immunity for all claims ‘arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter,’” he continued, adding, “This case concerns whether this exception applies when postal workers intentionally fail to deliver the mail. We hold that it does.”
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The case, U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, stemmed from a dispute between Texas landlord Lebene Konan and her local post office. Konan alleged that postal workers in Euless, Texas, intentionally withheld and returned mail addressed to her and her tenants at two rental properties she owned, causing financial harm and emotional distress.
After her administrative complaints failed, Konan sued the United States in federal court, asserting state law claims including nuisance, tortious interference and conversion. A federal district court dismissed her claims, citing the FTCA’s postal exception, which preserves immunity for “any claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit revived the lawsuit, ruling the exception did not apply to intentional acts of nondelivery. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case to resolve a split among federal appeals courts.
Reversing the Fifth Circuit, the high court held that the ordinary meaning of “loss” and “miscarriage” at the time Congress enacted the FTCA in 1946 encompassed mail that fails to arrive at its destination, regardless of whether the failure was negligent or intentional.
“A ‘miscarriage of mail’ includes failure of the mail to arrive at its intended destination, regardless of the carrier’s intent or where the mail goes instead,” Thomas wrote.
The decision vacates the Fifth Circuit’s ruling and sends the case back for further proceedings, though the justices did not decide whether all of Konan’s claims are barred.
“We hold that the postal exception covers suits against the United States for the intentional nondelivery of mail,” Thomas concluded. “We do not decide whether all of Konan’s claims are barred by the postal exception, or which arguments Konan adequately preserved.
Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion, arguing that the postal exception was meant to cover negligent mistakes, not intentional misconduct.
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“Today, the majority concludes that the postal exception captures, and therefore protects, the intentional nondelivery of mail, even when that nondelivery was driven by malicious reasons,” she dissented.
Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the three liberal justices – Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – in the dissent.
The ruling underscores the limits of the FTCA’s waiver of sovereign immunity and narrows the circumstances in which individuals can seek damages for mail-related harms, even when they allege deliberate wrongdoing by postal employees.
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