The Supreme Court on Feb. 24 kept the lid on lawsuits against the U.S. Postal Service for delivery problems, ruling against a Texas landlord who said the federal agency deliberately withheld her mail as a form of racial harassment.
The court, in a 5-4 opinion, said the immunity Congress gave the Postal Service from lawsuits seeking monetary damages covers acts alleged to be intentional.
The struggling Postal Service warned that without these protections, it could face a flood of lawsuits over its daily handling of 300 million mail pieces.
But the attorney for the landlord, Lebene Konan, said situations like hers – in which she and tenants did not get their mail delivered for years even after she filed dozens of complaints − are rare. {snip}
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court did not decide whether all of the landlord’s claims are barred by the ruling, just that the Postal Service can’t be sued for intentionally not delivering the mail. The court sent the case back to the lower courts for further proceedings.
Still, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the majority expanded protections for the Postal Service beyond what Congress intended, covering missed mail “even when that nondelivery was driven by malicious reasons.”
{snip}
Konan, who rents rooms in houses she owns in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, contends that postal workers refused to deliver mail to her or tenants for two years because they did not like the idea of a Black landlord renting to White people.
As a result, she said, some tenants moved out and others missed bills, medicine deliveries and other important mail.
{snip}
The post Supreme Court Hands USPS a Win, Blocks Lawsuits for Intentional Delivery Issues appeared first on American Renaissance.
American RenaissanceRead More
R1
T1
