SCOTUS agrees to hear racial discrimination case brought by Black landlord

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case against the United States Postal Service brought by a black landlord alleging discrimination.

SCOTUS will decide whether the USPS can be held liable for its alleged refusal to deliver mail to a landlord from Euless, Texas, who is claiming postal carriers discriminated against her due to her race. The case was brought before the highest court in the land after the federal government appealed a lower court’s judgment, which allowed Lebene Konan to pursue damages from the USPS allegedly for intentionally refusing to deliver mail to two addresses in her name.

She has even gone as far as to claim the mail organization enacted a “racially motivated harassment campaign” against her “solely because she is Black.”

“The postal workers’ alleged actions — which included changing the designated owner of one of her properties to a white tenant and changing the mailbox lock at the property so only the white tenant could access it — cost Konan thousands of dollars in rental income when tenants moved out after failing to receive important mail like doctor’s bills, medications and credit card statements, she said,” The Hill reported.

She brought the legal action against the USPS under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which normally prevents federal employees from litigation unless they have engaged in a “wrongful or negligent act” during the course of their job. The Department of Justice has further found that the FTCA does not apply to allegations “arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”

“[The Postal Service] delivers more than 300 million pieces of mail every day on average,” the government wrote in a letter to SCOTUS. “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 [Postal Service] employee acted intentionally.”

However, Konan believes the exception was “meant to protect the government from lawsuits stemming from less consequential mail issues than hers, like glassware shattering during shipping or a belated birthday gift.”

“This case couldn’t be more different,” said her lawyer, Robert Clary.

Writer/Columnist

Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to BizPac Review.

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