On February 24, the Supreme Court decided that the exception to the Federal Torts Claims Act that protects the U.S. Postal Service from lawsuits over lost or miscarried mail also bars lawsuits in cases where a postal worker intentionally failed to deliver an individual’s mail. The vote on the decision was 5 to 4, with a dissenting opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in which she argued that the majority opinion provided the U.S. Postal Service far more protection from lawsuits than Congress had intended to give it. The case is called U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, and you can read the opinion here.
As you probably know, the Federal Torts Claims Act was enacted to remove the sovereign immunity of the United States from suits in tort. However, the Act retained a long list of exceptions for cases in which the Federal Government retains immunity. Among those is an exception which covers “[a]ny claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”
In previous cases, the Court has decided that the exception does not apply to claims arising from car accidents caused by postal employees delivering mail or to claims for slip and falls caused by negligent placement a package on a porch step. The issue in Konan was whether the exception should cover claims concerning intentional misconduct committed by postal employees, including the conduct of withholding a person’s mail for malicious reasons.
The majority opinion rules that the statute bars these claims, even in cases where a postal worker intentionally fails to deliver an individual’s mail. The dissenting opinion, in contrast, argues that the majority opinion provides the U.S. Postal Service far more protection from lawsuits than Congress had intended to give it.
You can read more about the case in Courthouse News Service, SCOTUS Blog and The Hill.
