A long-running legal dispute between the Postal Service and the union that represents its postal police force, over the jurisdiction of postal police officers (PPOs), heads back to a third-party arbitrator to settle the issue.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in a ruling Wednesday, sent the case back to an arbitrator, to “hash out the parties’ differences.”
The case heads back to arbitrator Barry Simon, who ruled in February 2023 that postal police officers have jurisdictional authority beyond USPS facilities, when carrying out some duties, such as mobile patrols and protection details for high-value mail.
The lawsuit centers on a memo that the Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), the Postal Service’s law enforcement arm, issued a memo in August 2020, stating postal police officers “may not exercise [any] law enforcement authority in contexts unrelated to Postal Service premises.”
