The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Tuesday that a Texas woman cannot sue the United States Postal Service over claims that mail carriers intentionally refused to deliver her mail because she is Black. The decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, holds that federal law exempts USPS from such lawsuits even when mail carriers deliberately withhold delivery.
The ruling threw out a lower court decision that had allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Whatever you think of the underlying claim, the case raises a question that conservatives should find deeply familiar: What happens when a sprawling federal bureaucracy is functionally immune from accountability?
Lebene Konan, a Texas real estate agent and landlord, claimed that USPS employees conducted what she called a "racially motivated harassment campaign" against her for years. Her allegations were not casual. According to court records, she filed more than 50 administrative complaints. She alleged that postal officials changed the lock on her post office box, declined to deliver mail to one of her properties, and at one point taped a sign to her mailbox announcing they would not deliver mail to her tenants, according to CNN.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described her situation bluntly:
"Instead, the facts present a continued, intentional effort not to deliver Konan's mail over a two-year period."
That appeals court had reversed a district court's dismissal of the case and allowed the lawsuit to move forward. The Supreme Court's Tuesday decision reversed the appeals court in turn.
At issue is a provision in the Federal Tort Claims Act. Congress waived sovereign immunity for most federal agencies so citizens could sue over wrongful conduct, but it carved out an exception for claims involving the "loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission" of mail. The majority held that this exception covers even intentional withholding of delivery.
Thomas wrote that the practical consequences of ruling otherwise would overwhelm the system. Given that USPS delivered more than 116 billion pieces of mail to more than 166 million delivery points in fiscal year 2023, allowing tort suits for mail delivery disputes would open a floodgate:
"Given the frequency of postal workers' interactions with citizens, those suits would arise so often that they would create a significant burden for the government and the courts."
Justice Alito, who joined the majority, had previewed this concern during oral arguments in October, asking whether such litigation would drive up the cost of postage. "Is the cost of the first-class letter going to be $3 now?" he asked.
Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett also joined the majority.
Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Gorsuch, Kagan, and Jackson. That's an unusual coalition. Sotomayor argued the majority stretched the postal exception well beyond its intended scope:
"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 continued:
"Because this interpretation expands the scope of the exception beyond what it can reasonably support, and undermines the FTCA's sweeping waiver in the process, I respectfully dissent."
The fact that Gorsuch landed on the same side as three liberal justices is worth noting. It suggests this case doesn't split neatly along the usual ideological lines. It's less about left versus right and more about how much latitude you give federal agencies to shield themselves from their own misconduct.
The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that Konan's mail was withheld for a technical reason: she was required to maintain a directory of her current tenants and failed to do so. Whether postal officials were justified in withholding the mail was not at issue before the Supreme Court, and that question will now be decided by lower courts.
But here is the core problem. Even if lower courts determine that the postal officials acted improperly, Tuesday's ruling means Konan has no tort remedy against USPS. She can pursue administrative channels. She can file complaints. She already filed more than 50 of them. The system absorbed everyone and kept going.
Conservatives are rightly skeptical of lawfare and litigation run amok. No one wants every misdelivered package to become a federal case. Thomas and Alito are correct that a nation processing 116 billion pieces of mail a year cannot function if every dispute becomes a lawsuit.
But conservatives also understand something else: federal agencies that cannot be sued are federal agencies that cannot be checked. Sovereign immunity exists to protect the government's ability to function. It was never meant to be a blanket permission slip for bureaucratic misconduct.
The Postal Service is the federal government at its most local. It shows up at your door. It holds your bills, your medications, and your correspondence. When USPS fails, it fails in the most personal, tangible way a government agency can.
Konan's allegations describe something beyond routine incompetence. A sign taped to a mailbox announcing that delivery would be refused is not a clerical error. More than 50 complaints ignored is not a backlog. Two years of intentional nondelivery, as the 5th Circuit characterized it, is not a system working as designed.
Whether race motivated the conduct remains unresolved. But the institutional question doesn't require settling that debate. A federal agency allegedly targeted one citizen's mail for two years, weathered dozens of complaints without correction, and now stands behind a legal shield that prevents the courts from providing a remedy. That should concern anyone who believes government power requires accountability.
The administrative state does not reform itself through internal complaint forms. Fifty of them proved that much.
