Is the USPS above the law?

The Supreme Court will weigh the issue today.

Photo by Jackie Hope on Unsplash

Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the U.S. Postal Service v. Konan case. At stake is whether the USPS can be held accountable for refusing to deliver the mail. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), the USPS cannot be hauled into court for “[a]ny claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”

SCOTUS will now consider the limits of that statutory language.

The original case was brought by Texas landlord Lebene Konan — who is black and rents to white tenants. Konan was allegedly the victim of a years’ long harassment campaign by two local postal employees who weren’t fond of interracial renting. As her legal team notes, “[t]he harassment campaign started when Rojas, the local mail carrier, changed the designated owner of one of Ms. Konan’s properties to one of her white tenants. ... When Ms. Konan complained to the local post office, the USPS Inspector General ‘confirmed that [she] owned the property’ and ordered ‘that mail be delivered.’” But the local postmaster overrode that directive, and things only escalated from there. The local post office marked her mail “undeliverable,” refused to deliver to her, and gave her a hard time when she came in to pick up her mail. This despicable course of conduct not only cost Ms. Konan rental income but also prevented her from accessing critical mail such as medications and doctor’s bills.

Fortunately, Konan could (seemingly) hold the USPS legally accountable because acts of sabotage by the USPS are more than just “loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission” of mail. However, the government begs to differ, reading these words implausibly broadly to include intentionally holding up the mail. And, according to the Department of Justice, holding postal predators accountable under the FTCA would create a litigation free-for-all in which “any person whose mail is lost or misdelivered could bring a federal tort suit—and potentially proceed to burdensome discovery” on the theory of intentional tampering. This is a silly argument designed to let the USPS off the hook for anything it does wrong. The reality is there’s a world of difference between (rightly) claiming that the mail is way too slow and alleging a series of coordinated efforts to sabotage communications. As Konan’s legal team rightly points out, only a small proportion of complaints against America’s mail carrier are remotely sinister enough to compare to Konan’s plight and probably wouldn’t be worth the plaintiff’s while to pursue in court.

In its amicus brief filed at the Supreme Court, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance argued that longstanding legal precedent and even old language found in eighty-year-old Post Office Department manuals make the government’s interpretation of FTCA untenable. Hopefully, SCOTUS agrees and finally holds the USPS accountable.