Texas woman who claims Postal Service intentionally withheld her mail takes case to Supreme Court

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — Plenty of Americans have a gripe with the US Postal Service. Lebene Konan managed Wednesday to get hers in front of the Supreme Court.

The Texas real estate agent and landlord claims that the USPS has for years intentionally declined to deliver her mail. She asked the nation’s highest court to allow her to continue her lawsuit, despite a 1946 federal law that shields the Postal Service from legal liability for losing the mail.

While Americans may generally sue the government for harms that it causes, Congress carved out an exception for claims involving the “loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission” of mail. The question for the Supreme Court was whether that provision immunizes mail carriers from suits even if they intentionally withhold letters and packages.

Konan, who is Black, claims her mail was blocked because of a “racially motivated harassment campaign.” The Justice Department, representing the USPS, countered the law bars Konan from suing, even if the “loss” or “miscarriage” of her mail was intentional.

The case seemed likely to divide the Supreme Court in unexpected ways, with several conservative justices suggesting they had reservations with the government’s blanket reading of the law.

The word “loss,” Chief Justice John Roberts said, doesn’t typically convey the idea of malfeasance.

“If I say ‘I lost my car,’ people aren’t going to think somebody stole his car,” said Roberts, a member of the court’s conservative wing. “They’re going to think I forgot where it was.”

“If somebody said, ‘I lost the mail,’ I wouldn’t think right away that somebody stole it,” Roberts said.

Justice Elena Kagan, a member of the court’s liberal wing, seemed to agree with that assessment.

“It’s like you lost your keys, you lost your pen, they lost your letters,” Kagan said. “That’s the way it seems most natural to me to read this sentence.”

Konan alleged that the post office that covers two rental properties she owns in suburban Dallas changed the lock on her post office box and then declined to deliver the mail to the property. She claimed that happened because the carrier and postmaster did not “like the idea that a Black person” owned the properties.

She filed more than 50 administrative complaints, according to court records, and received written confirmation from postal authorities that she was entitled to have her mail delivered.

Konan said that she and her tenants missed “doctor’s bills, medications, credit card statements, car titles and property tax statements.”

At one point, Konan said, local postal officials taped a sign to her mailbox announcing in bright red letters that they would not deliver the mail to her tenants.

The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that the mail was withheld for a technical reason. Konan, it said, was required to maintain a directory of her current tenants and failed to do so. Whether the postal officials were justified in withholding the mail was not at issue at the Supreme Court – only whether Konan can pursue her case.

A federal district court in Texas granted the government’s request to dismiss the case because of the postal exception. But the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, allowing the lawsuit to proceed. The Biden administration appealed the decision to the Supreme Court last year, and the Trump administration has continued to defend against the suit.

In the fiscal year that ended in 2023, the US Postal Service delivered more than 116 billion pieces of mail to more than 166 million delivery points across the nation, the government noted. If courts embraced Konan’s position, the government said, it could open up the USPS to a flood of lawsuits.

That was a point several justices picked up on during the arguments Wednesday.

Justice Samuel Alito, in particular, pressed Konan’s attorney on why anyone upset at their local post office couldn’t claim that a delay was intentional and file suit.

“What will the consequences be if all these suits are filed and they have to be litigated?” Alito asked at one point. “Is the cost of the first-class letter going to be $3 now?”

He questioned whether “it is going to be very easy for people who are unhappy with the delivery of mail to claim that they’re not getting their letters because of intentional conduct.”

Maybe, Alito said, people would claim delays because they “didn’t give the mail carrier a tip at Christmas” or maybe because they have “a big dog that ran up to the door and scared the mail carrier.”

A decision in Konan’s case is expected by the end of June.

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