The U.S. Postal Service cannot be sued for damages for intentionally failing to deliver mail, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision released Tuesday.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled the government's sovereign immunity bars claims for undelivered mail.
"The United States enjoys sovereign immunity and cannot be sued without its consent," Thomas wrote, citing the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) granting "sovereign immunity for a wide range of claims about mail."
"Specifically, the FTCA's postal exception retains sovereign immunity for all claims ‘arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter,’" he continued, adding, "This case concerns whether this exception applies when postal workers intentionally fail to deliver the mail. We hold that it does."
The decision vacates the Fifth Circuit's ruling and sends the case back for further proceedings, though the justices did not decide whether all of Konan's claims are barred.
"We hold that the postal exception covers suits against the United States for the intentional nondelivery of mail," Thomas concluded. "We do not decide whether all of Konan's claims are barred by the postal exception, or which arguments Konan adequately preserved.
Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion, arguing that the postal exception was meant to cover negligent mistakes, not intentional misconduct.
"Today, the majority concludes that the postal exception captures, and therefore protects, the intentional nondelivery of mail, even when that nondelivery was driven by malicious reasons," she dissented.
Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the three liberal justices – Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – in the dissent.
The ruling underscores the limits of the FTCA's waiver of sovereign immunity and narrows the circumstances in which individuals can seek damages for mail-related harms, even when they allege deliberate wrongdoing by postal employees.