Supreme Court will consider whether Black landlord can sue over mail said to be intentionally withheld
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether a Texas landlord can sue the U.S. Postal Service for allegedly withholding mail from herself and her tenants because she is Black. (Image from Shutterstock.com)
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether a Texas landlord can sue the U.S. Postal Service for allegedly withholding mail from herself and her tenants because she is Black.
The high court accepted the case of Lebene Konan, who claims that two postal workers engaged in a racially motivated harassment campaign against her because they didn’t like a Black woman leasing rooms to white people. Those actions drove away tenants and impaired her rental income, Konan alleges.
At issue is whether the “postal exception” to the Federal Tort Claims Act permits Konan’s lawsuit, according to the cert petition. The federal law generally allows suits against the United States, but the exception prohibits suits for “any claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans ruled for Konan. The appeals court held that an intentional refusal to deliver mail is not the kind of loss, miscarriage or negligent transmission for which a suit is barred under the postal exception.
Three other federal appeals courts have reached a contrary conclusion, according to the government’s cert petition. But Konan’s brief says those decisions happened over the course of 80 years, “and it’s not even clear those circuits would disagree in Ms. Konan’s case.” And one of those decisions was unpublished with no precedential value and was only two paragraphs in length.
USA Today and SCOTUSblog (here and here) are among the publications that covered the case, U.S. Postal Service v. Konan.
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