SCOTUS: Postal Service can’t be sued for ‘intentional’ failure to deliver mail

The Federal Tort Claims Act‘s exception for claims “arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter” bars a property owner’s claim that U.S. Postal Service employees intentionally withheld her mail and interfered with its delivery, a divided U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

The plaintiff in the case, Lebene Konan, had a long-running dispute with her local post office in Euless, Texas, over delivery of mail to two rental properties she owned.

After being denied administrative remedies, the plaintiff sued in federal court, alleging the Postal Service intentionally and wrongfully withheld her mail and the mail of her tenants. The plaintiff’s lawsuit included state-law claims for nuisance, tortious interference with prospective business relations, conversion and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The plaintiff appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a federal judge dismissed the case based on the conclusion the federal government was immune under 28 U.S.C. §1346(b)(1), a provision in the FTCA that bars “[a]ny claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”

A panel of the 5th Circuit reversed, concluding the terms the terms “loss,” “miscarriage,” and “negligent transmission” do not encompass the intentional act of not delivering mail at all.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a split between the 5th Circuit and the 1st and 2nd Circuit.

In reversing the 5th Circuit, a majority of the Supreme Court concluded the federal government enjoyed sovereign immunity for claims arising out of the intentional non-delivery of mail because both “miscarriage” and “loss” of mail under the FTCA’s postal exception can occur as a result of the Postal Service’s intentional failure to deliver the mail.

Click here to read the full text of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Feb. 24 decision in U.S. Postal Service v. Konan.

BULLET POINTS: “According to Konan and the dissent, the postal exception does not apply to Konan’s claims because she alleges that postal workers intentionally refused to deliver her mail. We disagree. Both ‘miscarriage’ and ‘loss’ of mail under the postal exception can occur as a result of the Postal Service’s intentional failure to deliver the mail.’…

“Because a ‘miscarriage’ includes any failure of mail to arrive properly, a person experiences a miscarriage of mail when his mail is delivered to his neighbor, held at the post office, or returned to the sender — regardless of why it happened. Konan’s claims about the Postal Service’s willful failure to deliver her mail therefore result from the miscarriage of her mail.”

— Justice Clarence Thomas, opinion of the court

“For two years, respondent Lebene Konan and her tenants did not receive mail addressed to the rental properties that Konan owned. According to Konan, negligence was not to blame. Quite the opposite: She alleges that United States Postal Service employees intentionally withheld delivery because they did not like ‘that a black person own[ed]’ the properties and ‘lease[d] rooms . . . to white people.’ …

“The United States is generally protected by sovereign immunity, but Congress, through the FTCA, has enacted a capacious waiver of that immunity for tort suits when an individual is harmed by a federal employee acting within the scope of her employment. That waiver, however, is subject to several exceptions. Today, the Court holds that one exception — the postal exception — prevents individuals from recovering for injuries based on a postal employee’s intentional misconduct, including when an employee maliciously withholds their mail. Because this reading of the postal exception transforms, rather than honors, the exception Congress enacted, I respectfully dissent.”

— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting