On Oct. 8 in U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, the court will weigh in on a disagreement among the federal courts of appeals over when the government can be sued over undelivered mail in a case that likely will come down to the justices’ interpretation of two words: “loss” and “miscarriage.”
The dispute began when a landlady named Lebene Konan realized that the mailbox key for one of her two properties in Euless, Texas, no longer worked. As a result, she couldn’t retrieve mail for her tenants at that address, which she typically collected from the shared mailbox and distributed.
When Konan contacted the local post office, she learned she wouldn’t get a new key or receive mail at the address until she proved she was the property owner. She satisfied that requirement, but it did little to solve her mail delivery problems.
Konan alleges that before and after the new key was issued, two local employees of the U.S. Postal Service led “a campaign of racial harassment” against her, which involved repeatedly refusing to deliver mail for her or her tenants, imposing onerous identification requirements, and sending several items back to the sender. Konan further alleges that when she asked for all mail to be held at the post office, she faced additional administrative hurdles when picking it up.
