Supreme Court to decide if Texas woman who says mail wasn’t delivered because she is Black can sue USPS

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear arguments in a case against the US Postal Service filed by a Texas woman who claims her carrier declined to deliver the mail to her rental properties because she is Black.

Lebene Konan, a realtor and licensed insurance agent, alleged that the post office that covers two rental properties she owns in suburban Dallas changed the lock on her post office box and then declined to deliver the mail to the property for two to three months.

Konan claimed that happened because the carrier and postmaster did not “like the idea that a Black person” owned them.

A 1946 law generally allows people to sue the federal government for damages if employees cause injury or property loss through their negligence. But the law includes a number of exceptions, including for any claim raising from the “loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.” The question for the high court, then, is whether the exception applies to Konan’s situation.

A federal district court in Texas granted the government’s request to dismiss the case, because of the exception. But the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, allowing the lawsuit to proceed. The Biden administration appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in September, and the Trump administration has continued to defend against the suit.

In the fiscal year that ended in 2023, the US Postal Service delivered more than 116 billion pieces of mail to more than 166 million delivery points across the nation, the government noted. If courts embraced Konan’s position, the government said, it could open the USPS up to a flood of lawsuits.

“Under the logic of the Fifth Circuit’s decision, any person whose mail is lost or misdelivered could bring a federal tort suit – and potentially proceed to burdensome discovery – so long as she alleges that a USPS employee acted intentionally,” the government told the high court in its appeal.

The Supreme Court is likely to hear arguments in the fall and hand down a decision next year.

SCOTUS declines to revive gun ban for 18-year-olds

Also Monday, the court also declined to review an appeals court ruling that found Minnesota’s ban on people under 21 carrying handguns violated the Second Amendment.

The decision means that ban will remain blocked.

A three-judge panel of the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals said in a unanimous decision that the 2003 law runs afoul of both the Second Amendment and the 14th Amendment, holding that the state could not lawfully prohibit individuals between the ages of 18 and 20 from obtaining a public carry permit simply because they are not yet 21.

Minnesota appealed that decision in January, arguing that the appeals court failed to take into account a new Supreme Court decision from last year that softened the historical standard courts must consider when weighing whether gun regulations are constitutional.

More than 30 states and the District of Columbia have similar regulations. Another appeals court, the 5th Circuit, ruled earlier this year that a law banning the sale of handguns to 18- to 20-year-olds is also unconstitutional.

The question of how far governments may go in regulating guns for those under 21 has been caught up in a broader debate about history that was created by a landmark 2022 decision from the Supreme Court that made it easier for Americans to carry guns in public. That decision required courts to find analogous gun regulations in history before ruling they were consistent with the Second Amendment.

In the case of Minnesota’s law, the 8th Circuit ruled that there was no adequate historical analogue to the state’s ban.

But a subsequent Supreme Court decision last year appeared to alter the analysis lower courts must make when weighing the constitutionality of gun laws.

In that case, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law that bars people who are the subject of domestic violence restraining orders from owning guns. A majority of justices said courts need not find the exact same regulation in the historical record but rather whether the new law is “relevantly similar” to laws that “our tradition is understood to permit.”

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