Welcome back to SCOTUS oral arguments and Opinions.

Today we're digging into a case that asks a surprisingly tricky question.

Can you sue the federal government if a postal worker intentionally refuses to deliver your mail as part of a campaign of racial harassment?

The case is United States Postal Service v. Lebanikonin.

At first glance, you'd think the answer would be an obvious yes, but it all comes down to the fine print.

In a federal law called the Federal Tort Claims act, or ftca.

The government argues that a special postal exception in that law gives it total immunity here, even for intentional wrongful acts.

And that's the core tension.

On one hand, we have the fundamental principle that there should be a remedy for a wrong, especially one as serious as alleged here.

On the other, the government has a powerful argument that Congress wrote a broad exception to protect the massive essential operation of the Postal Service from being swamped by lawsuits.

This case is a master class in statutory interpretation, where the meaning of just a few words could decide everything.

Absolutely.

So let's get right to the legal text.

Will you read the question presented to the court?

Let's do it.

The court must answer whether a plaintiff's claim that she and her tenants did not receive mail because Postal Service employees intentionally did not deliver it to a designated address arises out of the loss or miscarriage of letters or postal matter.

And this all hinges on one sentence from the FTCA, specifically Title 28, Section 2680B.

I'll read the key text.

The law's waiver of sovereign immunity does not apply to any claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.

You know, when I read that, my eyes are immediately drawn to that last part.

Negligent transmission.

Congress specifically used the word negligent, but for loss and miscarriage, there's no modifier.

They just stand there.

Exactly.

And that's the entire battleground.

The government argues that because Congress didn't say anything, negligent loss or negligent miscarriage, those terms must cover all types of loss and miscarriage, including intentional ones.

So what this really means is the government's position is that if a postal worker accidentally sets your mail on fire, that's negligent transmission, and they're immune.

But if he intentionally sets it on fire, that would be a loss, and they're also immune.

That seems counterintuitive.

It does, but that's their reading of the text.

They argue Congress knew how to limit the exception to negligence when it wanted to, and it chose not to.

For loss and miscarriage.

It's a classic textualist argument that's going to be fascinating to see the court wrestle with.

So let's talk about the facts that brought us here.

This case is about Lebenye Conan, who is a black realtor and landlady in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

She owned and rented out rooms in two properties in Euless, Texas.

Her lawsuit alleges that starting in 2022 USPS employees, a mail carrier named Raymond Rojas, and a postmaster named Jason Drake began a two year campaign of racial harassment against her.

The allegations are pretty shocking.

Ms. Conan claims the employees change postal records to list one of her white tenants as the property owner, changed the locks on her mailbox so only the white tenant could access it, and refused to deliver mail to her and her tenants for months on end.

And this wasn't just a simple mistake.

Ms. Conan tried everything to fix it.

She filed over 50 administrative complaints and even got the USPS Inspector General to investigate, who then ordered the employees to deliver the mail.

But according to her complaint, they still refused.

The mail was either held at the post office or marked undeliverable and returned to the sender.

So after exhausting all her options, Ms. Konan sued under the FTCA.

For our listeners, that's the law that allows individuals to sue the United States for torts, which are basically civil wrongs committed by federal employees.

But as we mentioned, it has a lot of exceptions.

The district court sided with the government, dismissing her case based on that postal exception we read.

But the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed.

It held that the terms loss and miscarriage both imply unintentional acts.

The court said that a loss is by nature unintentional.

As they put it, no one intentionally loses something, and a miscarriage happens when mail is mistakenly delivered to the wrong place, not intentionally withheld.

And that disagreement between the lower courts is what brought this case to the Supreme Court.

The government asked the court to step in, and the court granted certiorary and agreed to hear the case.

That's quite the fact pattern.

Let's now break down the legal arguments.

Both parties build their arguments around competing dictionary definitions, which is, frankly, something I found especially interesting.

The government's case is built on two main pillars, arguing that this intentional refusal to deliver mail is both a miscarriage and a loss.

Let's start with miscarriage.

The government went back to dictionaries from the 1940s when the law was written.

They found that Webster's second defined miscarriage broadly as a failure of something sent to arrive or failure to carry properly.

They argue this is a neutral definition.

It doesn't matter if the failure was accidental or intentional.

A failure is a failure.

So under their reading, it doesn't matter if the mail carrier accidentally drops your package in a river or purposefully throws it there.

Either way, it's a miscarriage and the government can't be sued.

What's their argument on the term loss?

It's very similar.

They argue loss just means deprivation, the failure to get something you were supposed to have.

And they make a really clever structural argument.

They point out that the FTCA's main section, the one that allows lawsuits in the first place, covers loss of property caused by the negligent or wrongful act of an employee.

Wait, so you're telling me the government is arguing that since the word loss in one part of the law covers intentional acts, it must mean the same thing in the exception part of the law?

Precisely.

It's called the presumption of consistent usage.

They argue it would be bizarre for loss to mean one thing on page one of the statute and something completely different on page five.

It's a powerful textual argument.

So how does Ms. Conan fight back against that?

She counters with her own deep dive into legal history and language.

On miscarriage, she argues the government is ignoring the term's specific legal meaning.

She says a miscarriage isn't just any failure to arrive.

It's when mail inadvertently ends up in the wrong hands.

It's an accident or mistake.

Taking the mail back to the post office isn't sending it to the wrong place.

It's a refusal to send it anywhere.

And that framing protects her from the government's argument because what happened to her was no accident.

What about loss?

For loss?

She argues its historical meaning was either destruction or misplacement, both of which are inherently accidental.

She cites Black's Law Dictionary, which defined lost property as something you part with involuntarily by accident or negligence.

Since the postal workers knew exactly where her mail was, it wasn't lost.

It was being held hostage.

So for Ms. Conan, the key isn't just the dictionary definition, but the entire statutory structure.

She argues that reading all three terms, loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission, together shows that Congress was only concerned with accidents, not intentional misconduct.

If Congress had wanted to immunize the government for intentional wrongdoing, it would have said so.

Oral arguments for this case are coming up, and I'll be listening for a few key things.

First, how do the justices react to this battle of the dictionaries?

Will they favor the government's broad general definitions or Ms. Conan's more specific contextual ones?

I'll be watching to see how much they focus on the practical consequences.

The government is raising the Alarm that if Ms. Konan wins, the floodgates will open for lawsuits every time someone is unhappy with their mail delivery.

Will the justices be persuaded by that?

Or will they see it as overblown, like Ms. Konan argues?

And I'm curious if any justice presses the government on the weird incentive its reading creates, where the government has immunity for an employee's intentional malicious act, but might not for a simple accident that falls outside the exception.

That seems odd.

So why does this case matter for Ms. Conan and anyone who has faced similar intentional misconduct?

The answer is obvious.

It's about whether there is any legal remedy when a government employee uses their power to harm you.

But the implications are much broader.

A win for the government could solidify a very strong shield of immunity for the Postal Service, potentially closing the courthouse doors for a wide range of wrongful conduct that isn't purely accidental.

It would confirm that this postal exception is a hard barrier regardless of employee intent.

On the other hand, a win for Ms. Conan would clarify that the FTCA's exceptions have limits.

It would signal that sovereign immunity doesn't protect the government from claims of intentional torts, even in the context of mail delivery.

It would mean that negligent in one part of the statute colors how we should read the other Related terms.

This is a fantastic case for anyone who loves the nuts and bolts of how statutes are ready.

We'll be watching the oral arguments closely and we'll be back with a full breakdown.

Thanks for tuning in to this deep dive into Postal Service versus Conan.

Please follow, share and rate my podcast.

And come back for the next episode where we'll discuss Bost vs. Illinois State Board of Elections.

This is yet case with potentially profound implications.

It centers on a challenge to state laws that permit election officials to count federal election ballots that count votes after Election Day.

The issue the court must confront is an antecedent question whether federal candidates have standing to challenge these state counting practices.

I can't wait.

That's it for today's episode on SCOTUS Oral arguments and opinions.

Talk to you soon.