{"ID":63782,"name":"United States Postal Service v. Konan","href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/cases\/2025\/24-351","view_count":0,"docket_number":"24-351","additional_docket_numbers":null,"manner_of_jurisdiction":"Writ of \u003Ci\u003Ecertiorari\u003C\/i\u003E","first_party":"United States Postal Service","second_party":"Lebene Konan","timeline":[{"event":"Granted","dates":[1745211600],"href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/case_timeline\/case_timeline\/55635"},{"event":"Argued","dates":[1759899600],"href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/case_timeline\/case_timeline\/55716"},{"event":"Decided","dates":[1771912800],"href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/case_timeline\/case_timeline\/55784"}],"lower_court":{"ID":10,"name":"United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit","href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/taxonomy\/term\/10"},"facts_of_the_case":"\u003Cp\u003ELebene Konan, a Black property owner, leased two rental residences in Euless, Texas, and retrieved business and tenant mail from a central mailbox daily. In May 2020, United States Postal Service (USPS) employee Jason Rojas changed the lock on the mailbox at one of Konan\u0027s properties without her approval, halted mail delivery, and demanded ownership verification. Even after USPS\u2019s Inspector General confirmed Konan\u2019s ownership, Rojas and another USPS employee, Raymond Drake, allegedly continued marking mail addressed to Konan and her tenants as undeliverable. Konan claims this refusal of service extended to her second property and was racially motivated, causing loss of rental income and disruption of essential communications.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EKonan sued USPS, Rojas, Drake, and the United States, raising claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) and alleging violations of the equal protection guarantees of 42 U.S.C. \u00a7\u00a7 1981 and 1985. The district court dismissed her FTCA claims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the postal-matter exception, and her equal protection claims for failure to state a claim. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the equal protection claims but reversed on the FTCA claim, holding that sovereign immunity did not bar claims based on intentional acts of mail non-delivery.\u003C\/p\u003E\n","question":"\u003Cp\u003EDoes a claim that Postal Service employees intentionally refused to deliver mail to a designated address arise out of \u201cthe loss\u201d or \u201cmiscarriage\u201d of postal matter under the Federal Tort Claims Act\u2019s postal-matter exception?\u003C\/p\u003E\n","conclusion":"\u003Cp\u003EThe Federal Tort Claims Act\u0027s postal exception \u2014 which bars lawsuits against the government for claims \u0022arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter\u0022 \u2014 shields the United States from liability even when postal workers intentionally fail to deliver mail, because both \u0022loss\u0022 and \u0022miscarriage\u0022 cover any deprivation or failure of mail to reach its destination, regardless of the postal worker\u0027s intent. Justice Clarence Thomas authored the 5\u20134 majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EStatutory terms carry the ordinary meanings they held when Congress enacted them, and the FTCA became law in 1946. At that time, \u0022miscarriage\u0022 of mail meant any failure of mail to arrive at its intended destination \u2014 dictionaries of the era defined it simply as mail that \u0022failed to reach its destination,\u0022 without limiting that failure to accidents or careless mistakes. Ordinary speakers of the period used \u0022miscarried\u0022 to describe mail stolen, burned, or otherwise deliberately kept from a recipient. Similarly, \u0022loss\u0022 meant any deprivation of mail, however caused. Dictionaries defined it as \u0022the act or fact of losing or suffering deprivation,\u0022 and people commonly described mail stolen by a carrier as \u0022lost.\u0022 Because the statute describes categories of harm \u2014 not categories of postal-worker behavior \u2014 a claim \u0022arises out of\u0022 a loss or miscarriage of mail whether a worker dropped the letter in a puddle or deliberately threw it away.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ETwo additional arguments for a narrower reading both fail. First, the word \u0022negligent\u0022 in the phrase \u0022negligent transmission\u0022 does not quietly import a negligence requirement into \u0022loss\u0022 and \u0022miscarriage\u0022 \u2014 under basic grammar rules, an adjective modifies only the word it directly precedes, not earlier words in a list. Congress added \u0022negligent\u0022 before \u0022transmission\u0022 specifically to prevent that category from sweeping in every mail-related claim regardless of whether anything actually went wrong during delivery; it was not signaling that the other two terms require carelessness. Second, the fact that \u0022loss\u0022 and \u0022miscarriage\u0022 overlap with each other in many cases does not make either word surplus \u2014 Congress routinely uses broad, overlapping terms to cast a wide net, and the canon against redundancy yields to the more fundamental rule that statutes mean what they say.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EJustice Sonia Sotomayor authored a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, arguing that the ordinary meanings of \u0022loss\u0022 and \u0022miscarriage\u0022 both connote inadvertence rather than deliberate wrongdoing, that Congress\u0027s choice to limit only \u0022transmission\u0022 with the word \u0022negligent\u0022 signals an intent to leave intentional misconduct outside the exception\u0027s scope. In the dissent\u2019s view, the majority\u0027s reading effectively gives the Postal Service the blanket immunity Congress deliberately withheld.\u003C\/p\u003E\n","advocates":[{"advocate":{"ID":62593,"name":"Frederick Liu","href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/people\/frederick_liu","view_count":0,"last_name":"Liu","roles":null,"thumbnail":null,"length_of_service":0,"identifier":"frederick_liu"},"advocate_description":"for the Petitioners","href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/case_advocate\/case_advocate\/23783"},{"advocate":{"ID":63611,"name":"Easha Anand","href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/people\/easha_anand","view_count":0,"last_name":"Anand","roles":null,"thumbnail":null,"length_of_service":0,"identifier":"easha_anand"},"advocate_description":"for the Respondent","href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/case_advocate\/case_advocate\/23784"}],"oral_argument_audio":[{"id":25805,"title":"Oral Argument - October 08, 2025","public_note":null,"unavailable":false,"display_title":null,"href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/case_media\/oral_argument_audio\/25805"}],"citation":{"volume":"607","page":null,"year":"2026","href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/case_citation\/case_citation\/28079"},"decisions":[{"description":"The FTCA\u0027s postal exception shields the United States from liability even when postal workers intentionally fail to deliver mail.","votes":[{"member":{"ID":15100,"name":"Clarence Thomas","href":"https:\/\/api.oyez.org\/people\/clarence_thomas","view_count":0,"last_name":"Thomas","roles":[{"id":2744,"type":"scotus_justice","date_start":688194000,"date_end":0,"appointing_president":"George H. 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