{"id":39071,"date":"2026-02-25T12:54:40","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T17:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=39071"},"modified":"2026-02-25T12:54:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T17:54:40","slug":"supreme-court-holds-that-u-s-postal-service-cant-be-sued-over-intentionally-misdelivered-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2026\/02\/25\/supreme-court-holds-that-u-s-postal-service-cant-be-sued-over-intentionally-misdelivered-mail\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court holds that U.S. Postal Service can\u2019t be sued over intentionally misdelivered mail"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Supreme Court Blog<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

2\/24\/26 – A divided Supreme Court sided with the federal government on Tuesday in U.S. Postal Service v. Konan<\/em><\/a>, a dispute over mishandled mail. Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Clarence Thomas\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0that a law protecting the U.S. Postal Service from lawsuits over lost or miscarried mail bars lawsuits over mail that was intentionally misdelivered.<\/p>\n

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, 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. \u201cIt is not the role of the Judiciary to supplant the choice Congress made because it would have chosen differently,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

The case emerged from a conflict between a landlord and postal workers in Euless, Texas. The landlord, Lebene Konan, spent years fighting to have her mail and mail belonging to her tenants delivered to a shared mailbox, but postal workers regularly held it at the post office or returned it to the sender, contending that Konan had not met identification requirements for all addressees.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Konan sued the U.S. Postal Service, two postal workers, and the United States, for, among other things, infliction of emotional distress and business interference, arguing that she was a victim of racial discrimination and that the mail delivery drama had made it more difficult for her to find and keep tenants. The Supreme Court case addressed only her claims against the U.S. Postal Service and United States under the\u00a0Federal Tort Claims Act<\/a>, which outlines the circumstances in which the federal government can be sued for damages.<\/p>\n

Specifically, the justices were asked to resolve a disagreement between the federal courts of appeals over the scope of the FTCA\u2019s postal exception, which protects the government from suits \u201carising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.\u201d The government contended that the postal exception bars Konan\u2019s claims, because intentional nondelivery of mail is a form of \u201closs\u201d or \u201cmiscarriage.\u201d Konan, on the other hand, argued that the postal exception doesn\u2019t cover intentional acts.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the court sided with the government, holding that an intentional failure to deliver the mail falls within the FTCA\u2019s postal exception. The ordinary meanings of both \u201cmiscarriage\u201d and \u201closs\u201d point the court to this conclusion, wrote Thomas in the majority opinion. \u201cBecause a \u2018miscarriage\u2019 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\u2014regardless of why it happened,\u201d he wrote. Similarly, \u201c[w]hen Congress enacted the FTCA, the \u2018loss\u2019 of mail ordinarily meant a deprivation of mail, regardless of how the deprivation was brought about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas also briefly described the scope of the U.S. Postal Service\u2019s work, noting that the postal exception was designed to ensure that the government would not face an endless stream of lawsuits over inevitable mail-delivery issues. \u201cIn 2024, the Postal Service\u2019s more than 600,000 employees delivered more than 112 billion pieces of mail\u2014over 300 million a day\u2014to more than 165 million delivery points. Unsurprisingly, given this volume, not all mail arrives properly and on time,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor rejected the majority\u2019s interpretation of \u201closs\u201d and \u201cmiscarriage,\u201d contending that its \u201creading of the postal exception transforms, rather than honors, the exception Congress enacted.\u201d Congress could have made it clear that the postal exception was broad, Sotomayor wrote, but, instead, it isolated specific forms of misconduct: \u201closs,\u201d miscarriage,\u201d and \u201cnegligent transmission.\u201d \u201cBy using \u2018specificity\u2019 over \u2018generality,\u2019 it follows that Congress intended for this exception\u201d to be limited in scope.<\/p>\n

The majority\u2019s interpretation of \u201closs\u201d and \u201cmiscarriage,\u201d Sotomayor continued, is at odds with how those terms are commonly used. \u201cPeople lose their mail when it gets stuck behind a drawer, not when they intentionally throw it away. \u2026 The same is true when the Postal Service loses someone\u2019s mail. The reason is an error, not deliberate wrongdoing,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Sotomayor concluded by challenging the majority\u2019s characterization of what was at stake in the case. \u201cContrary to the majority\u2019s suggestion otherwise, adhering to the text Congress enacted would not flood the Government or courts with frivolous lawsuits.\u201d And \u201ceven if ruling for Konan today would mean more suits against the Government for mail-related intentional torts tomorrow, that would not provide this Court with authority to change the text Congress enacted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Posted in\u00a0Court News<\/a>,\u00a0Featured<\/a>,\u00a0Merits Cases<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Cases:\u00a0United States Postal Service v. Konan<\/a><\/p>\n

Recommended Citation:<\/strong>\u00a0Kelsey Dallas,\u00a0Court holds that U.S. Postal Service can\u2019t be sued over intentionally misdelivered mail<\/em>,\u00a0SCOTUSblog\u00a0(Feb. 24, 2026, 2:30 PM), https:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/2026\/02\/court-holds-that-u-s-postal-service-cant-be-sued-over-intentionally-misdelivered-mail\/<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Supreme Court Blog 2\/24\/26 – A divided Supreme Court sided with the federal government on Tuesday in U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, a dispute over mishandled mail. Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Clarence Thomas\u00a0explained\u00a0that a law protecting the U.S. Postal Service from lawsuits over lost or miscarried mail bars lawsuits over mail […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39073,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39071\/revisions\/39073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}