Supreme Court rules the Postal Service can't be sued, even when mail is intentionally not delivered

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1. .

Lebene Konan owns two houses a block apart in Euless,
Texas—one on Saratoga Drive and the other on Trenton
Lane. Konan leases rooms to tenants in both houses and
occasionally stays at them herself. The Postal Service de-
livers mail for all the houses in the neighborhood to a cen-
tral structure with a box for each house. The Postal Service
distributes keys to the owners of the houses so that they can
retrieve their mail. As the homeowner, Konan received the
keys to the boxes for both houses. Konan kept the keys and
distributed the mail to her tenants daily, and she also re-
ceived some of her own mail at the Saratoga address.

Konan’s grievances with her mail service began in May
2020. After Konan noticed that no mail had arrived at her
Saratoga house in several days, she learned that the as-
signed carrier had changed the listed owner from Konan’s
name to a tenant’s name. The same carrier then authorized
a change of the lock to allow the tenant to have his own mail
key without Konan’s consent. Konan confronted the em-
ployees at the local post office about these changes. A su-
pervisor at the local post office explained to Konan that the
Postal Service would stop delivering mail to her Saratoga
address until the Postal Service Inspector General’s office
investigated and determined the proper owner. Konan then
received no mail to the Saratoga address for a couple of
months before service resumed.

Konan then learned that the same carrier had mail ad-
dressed to her and her tenants returned to senders as “un-
deliverable.” As a result, Konan and her tenants did not
receive important mail. Konan resorted to private carriers.
The disruptions in mail service resulted in the loss of ten-
ants and made it more difficult for Konan to attract new
tenants. The carrier also taped a red notice inside the mail-
box stating that mail addressed to some, but not all, of the
Saratoga residents could be delivered to the box. In 2021,
postal workers also allegedly stopped delivering mail to the
Trenton house after discovering that Konan owned it as
well.

In response, Konan signed up for the Postal Service’s “In-
formed Delivery” service, which allows customers to view
scans of incoming mail. When she discovered that mail on
its way to her addresses was not being delivered, she re-
quested that the mail for the Saratoga residence be held at
the post office so that she could retrieve it in person. But
the postal employees did not give her the mail because Ko-
nan failed to provide identification for the addressees. In
addition to these efforts, Konan also filed administrative
complaints, but without success.

In January 2022, Konan sued the United States in fed-
eral court. Konan alleged that the Postal Service intention-
ally and wrongfully withheld her mail. As relevant here,
Konan brought claims under state law for nuisance, tor-
tious interference with prospective business relations, con-
version, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
She sought damages for loss of rental income, the depriva-
tion of her rightful mail, and the distress that the postal
workers caused her.