WASHINGTON − TheSupreme Courton Feb. 24 kept the lid on lawsuits against the U.S. Postal Service for delivery problems, ruling against a Texas landlordwho saidthe federal agency deliberately withheld her mail as a form of racial harassment.
The court, in a 5-4 opinion, said the immunity Congress gave the Postal Service from lawsuits seeking monetary damages covers acts alleged to be intentional.
The struggling Postal Service warned that without these protections, it could face a flood of lawsuits over its daily handling of 300 million mail pieces.
But the attorney for the landlord, Lebene Konan, said situations like hers – in which she and tenants did not get their mail delivered for years even after she filed dozens of complaints − are rare. Konan's attorney doubted that allowing her suit to move forward would prompt a deluge of similar lawsuits, certainly not frivolous ones.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court did not decide whether all of the landlord's claims are barred by the ruling, just that the Postal Service can't be sued for intentionally not delivering the mail. The court sent the case back to the lower courts for further proceedings.
Still, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the majority expanded protections for the Postal Service beyond what Congress intended, covering missed mail "even when that nondelivery was driven by malicious reasons."
Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the court's six conservatives, joined Sotomayor and the two other liberal justices in dissent.
Landlord alleges postal workers refused to deliver her mail
Konan, who rents rooms in houses she owns in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, contends that postal workers refused to deliver mail to her or tenants for two years because they did not like the idea of a Black landlord renting to White people.
As a result, she said, some tenants moved out and others missed bills, medicine deliveries and other important mail.
Konan said she submitted more than 50 complaints to the Postal Service and asked the government watchdog that monitors the Postal Service to intervene before seeking compensation in court.
Lower courts were divided
A federal district judge said in 2023 she couldn't sue. That's because federal law protects the Postal Service from claims "arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter."
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But after Konan appealed, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit said that protection doesn't cover a postal worker's refusal to deliver the mail, which is what Konan wants the chance to prove.
When the high court took up the case −U.S. Postal Service v. Konan− in October, most of thedebatecentered on the meaning of the words "loss" and "miscarriage" in the postal exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act.
In the majority opinion, Thomas wrote that both "loss" and "miscarriage" can occur as a result of the Postal Service's intentional failure to deliver the mail.
"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," he wrote.
The justices also debated whether lawmakers intended to protect the Postal Service from paying damages for intentional wrongdoing, such as a vindictive postal worker tearing up someone's Social Security check.
Postal Service fears a 'deluge of suits'
Frederick Liu, the Department of Justice attorney representing the Postal Service, argued that Congress wanted to avoid a "deluge of suits."
The Postal Service delivers more than 300 million pieces of mail per day and receives 300,000 customer complaints per year alleging misconduct, according to the government. If even 1% of those complaints become lawsuits, Liu said, the number of suits filed against the Postal Service would quadruple.
"Things like intent are easy to allege and hard to disprove," he said of the difficulty of fighting those suits.
But Konan's lawyer pointed out that the government similarly warned about crippling lawsuits when theSupreme Court, in 2006, considered a case brought by a woman who tripped over mail left on her porch. Even after the court sided with the injured woman, the Postal Service wasn't flooded with lawsuits, Eash Anand said.
"We know Congress did not want to immunize USPS wholesale," she said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Supreme Court keeps lid on lawsuit against USPS for delivery issues
