The Supreme Court ruled Feb. 24 that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) cannot be sued for damages for intentionally failing to deliver mail, holding in a 5-4 decision that federal law preserves the government’s sovereign immunity in such cases.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said the Federal Tort Claims Act shields the government from lawsuits “arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter” and that the protection applies even when postal employees are accused of deliberately withholding mail.
“The United States enjoys sovereign immunity and cannot be sued without its consent,” Thomas wrote. The law’s so-called postal exception, he said, “retains sovereign immunity” for claims involving undelivered mail. “This case concerns whether this exception applies when postal workers intentionally fail to deliver the mail. We hold that it does.”
The case, U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, arose from a dispute between Texas landlord Lebene Konan and her local post office, which is in Euless. Konan alleged that postal workers intentionally withheld and returned mail addressed to her and her tenants at two rental properties she owned, causing financial harm and emotional distress.
A federal judge dismissed the case under the law’s postal exception, but the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it, prompting the Supreme Court’s review. Reversing the Fifth Circuit, the Supreme Court said the ordinary meaning of “loss” and “miscarriage” when Congress enacted the law encompassed mail that fails to reach 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 sends the case back to lower courts for further proceedings. The justices did not decide whether all of Konan’s claims are barred.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the postal exception was meant to cover negligent mistakes, not deliberate misconduct.
“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 wrote.
The ruling limits when individuals can seek damages for mail-related harms and clarifies the scope of the federal government’s waiver of sovereign immunity under the Federal Tort Claims Act.