Postal Service v. Konan

Majority — Thomas

Joined by: Roberts, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett

The majority held that the ordinary meanings of "loss" and "miscarriage" — as those words were understood when Congress enacted the FTCA in 1946 — are broad enough to cover intentional nondelivery of mail, not just accidental failures. The Court reasoned that "miscarriage" of mail meant any failure of mail to reach its intended destination, and that dictionaries and real-world usage at the time showed the word was applied to mail problems caused by theft and other deliberate acts, not only negligence. The Court further reasoned that "loss" of mail meant any deprivation of mail, and that ordinary speakers at the time described mail stolen by carriers as a "loss," showing the word was not limited to accidental misplacement. The majority also rejected the argument that the word "negligent" in "negligent transmission" implicitly narrows the other two terms, explaining that an adjective placed before one item in a list modifies only that item, not the others. Finally, the Court acknowledged that "loss" and "miscarriage" overlap significantly in meaning, but said Congress likely used broad, overlapping terms deliberately to keep mail-delivery complaints out of court.

Dissent reasoning

The dissent argued that the postal exception was written narrowly on purpose, and that Congress did not intend to immunize intentional misconduct by postal employees. Justice Sotomayor wrote that the ordinary meaning of "loss" strongly implies an unintentional event — people lose their keys by misplacing them, not by handing them away — and that the word "miscarriage" was similarly used in contexts suggesting inadvertence, not deliberate wrongdoing. The dissent pointed out that Congress specifically added the word "negligent" before "transmission," and argued this choice signals that Congress knew how to exclude intentional conduct when it wanted to; reading "loss" and "miscarriage" to cover intentional acts makes that deliberate word choice meaningless. The dissent also noted that pre-FTCA postal regulations used the separate word "detention" — not "miscarriage" — when mail was intentionally held back, suggesting the two concepts were understood differently. Finally, the dissent argued that allowing intentional-misconduct suits would not flood the courts, because other FTCA safeguards — such as the requirement that the employee act within the scope of employment, and pleading standards — would filter out most claims.