Supreme Court Rules Post Office Can’t Be Sued

The Supreme Court handed the U.S. Postal Service a significant legal victory Tuesday, ruling 5-4 that a federal law protecting the agency from liability over lost or misdelivered mail also blocks lawsuits alleging intentional misdelivery.

In U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, concluding that the Federal Tort Claims Act preserves the Postal Service’s immunity from claims tied to the “loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission” of letters or other postal matter.

The majority held that the statute does not apply only to negligent mistakes. It also covers situations in which mail is allegedly misdelivered or withheld intentionally.

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

Sotomayor argued that the majority’s reading gives the Postal Service broader legal protection than Congress authorized.

“It is not the role of the Judiciary to supplant the choice Congress made because it would have chosen differently,” Sotomayor wrote.

The case stemmed from a prolonged dispute in Euless, Texas, involving landlord Lebene Konan and local postal workers.

Konan wanted her mail, along with mail for her tenants, delivered to a shared mailbox at her property. Postal workers instead often held the mail at the post office or returned it to senders, citing concerns that identification requirements for some recipients had not been satisfied.

Konan sued the U.S. Postal Service, two postal employees, and the federal government.

She alleged emotional distress, interference with her business, and discrimination, arguing that the mail problems hurt her ability to attract and keep tenants.

The Supreme Court’s ruling dealt only with Konan’s claims against the Postal Service and the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which governs when the federal government can be sued for damages.

The decision did not resolve her separate claims against individual postal workers.

At the center of the case was the FTCA’s so-called “postal exception,” which shields the government from claims “arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”

The case required the Court to resolve a disagreement among federal appeals courts over how broadly that exception should be read.

The federal government argued that intentional nondelivery falls within the statute because such conduct still amounts to a “loss” or “miscarriage” of mail.

Konan countered that Congress intended the exception to apply only to negligence, not intentional misconduct.

A majority of the Supreme Court sided with the government.

Thomas wrote that the ordinary meaning of the statute supports a broader interpretation.

“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,” he wrote.

He added that “[w]hen Congress enacted the FTCA, the ‘loss’ of mail ordinarily meant a deprivation of mail, regardless of how the deprivation was brought about.”

Thomas also pointed to the sheer scale of the Postal Service’s work, noting that Congress had reason to prevent the federal government from being buried under lawsuits over delivery disputes.

“In 2024, the Postal Service’s more than 600,000 employees delivered more than 112 billion pieces of mail—over 300 million a day—to more than 165 million delivery points. Unsurprisingly, given this volume, not all mail arrives properly and on time,” he wrote.

From a conservative legal perspective, the ruling reflects a textual approach to statutory interpretation. Rather than rewriting the law based on policy concerns, the majority looked to the words Congress actually enacted and applied them to the dispute before the Court.

Sotomayor sharply disagreed.

In dissent, she argued that the majority’s interpretation “transforms, rather than honors, the exception Congress enacted.”

She said Congress could have written a broader shield for the Postal Service but instead chose specific language covering “loss,” “miscarriage,” and “negligent transmission.”

“By using ‘specificity’ over ‘generality,’ it follows that Congress intended for this exception” to be limited in scope, she wrote.

The ruling gives the Postal Service broader protection against damages lawsuits tied to mail delivery failures, even where plaintiffs allege intentional misconduct by postal employees.

For the federal government, the decision helps preserve a key limit on liability for an agency that handles hundreds of millions of pieces of mail every day.

For critics, the ruling raises concerns about whether citizens have enough recourse when they believe government employees intentionally mishandle their mail.

But for the majority, the issue was not whether the Postal Service should be accountable in every situation. The question was whether Congress allowed this kind of lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

By a narrow vote, the Court said it did not.