A black landlord in Texas says postal workers refused to deliver mail to her properties for two years because she rented rooms to white tenants.
Lebene Konan owns two rental properties in Euless, Texas, and according to her complaint USPS v. Konanthe postman serving her rental properties simply stopped working.
For almost three months, the United States Postal Service stopped delivering mail. She didn’t get her mail, and neither did her tenants. Her postman decided which mail items were delivered and which were not.
He also marked important documents addressed to both Konan and her tenants as “undeliverable” and returned them to sender. At one point he changed the mailbox lock so that only one tenant could access it. (And yes, that tenant was white.)
In the age of instant gratification via text and email, the importance of mail seems to be declining. But when a postal worker refuses to deliver mail, they may decide who gets access to pay stubs, credit card statements, court notices, government benefits and—crucially, given the maniac in the White House—voting and election information.
Konan says the reason for this deplorable behavior was explicit: the postal workers objected to a black woman owning property and renting it to white tenants.
So she filed a lawsuit against the United States Postal Service seeking monetary damages.
And the Supreme Court’s answer was simple: bad luck. The USPS doesn’t have to pay you a dime.
Racial discrimination is still illegal… officially
If that seems grossly unfair to you, that’s because it is. If the USPS refuses to deliver your mail because you are black, then you should be able to sue the USPS for discrimination and be financially compensated for emotional distress and any lost income that the USPS’s deplorable behavior caused.
But unfortunately for Konan, the government generally enjoys something called sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity is the rule that says the government can’t be sued unless the government agrees to be sued – which is a very useful system if you happen to be the government.
Sometimes, however, the federal government throws us a curveball and allows lawsuits against them for certain types of misconduct, thus abrogating sovereign immunity. One such law is the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The FTCA offers people the opportunity to recover damages for tort. (A tort is a negligent or intentional wrongful act that causes injury to another person, his property, or his reputation.) Through the FTCA, Congress agreed that when federal employees cause harm while on the job, the government can be forced to pay.
But that didn’t matter in Konan’s case, because the FTCA contains an exception for any “claim arising out of loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal items.” And in a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court ruled that this exception includes intentional withholding of mail.
Even the deliberate refusal to deliver mail gives rise to sovereign immunity Thomas’ strained interpretation of the law.
Apparently you can ‘lose’ mail on purpose. When was the last time you deliberately lost something?
The Supreme Court’s ruling does not endorse racist behavior. It is still against the law to discriminate against black people – at least officially.
But if there is no right to recover damages when a racist postal worker refuses to deliver mail because he is angry that a black woman owns a few pieces of property, then the Postal Service has no financial incentive to stop racist employees from throwing black people’s mail into a river.
The disappearing right to compensation
Konan stands alongside a series of recent Supreme Court decisions that limit the availability of damages when federal officials violate individual rights.
In 2017 Ziglar vs. Abbasithe Court refused to allow compensation claims brought by Muslim men detained after the September 11 terrorist attacks, claiming that they were held in poor conditions because of their religion and national origin.
Three years later, inside Hernandez vs. meatthe Court refused to allow a damages case against a Border Patrol agent who shot and killed a Mexican teenager who was on the Mexican side of the border. The majority pointed to national security and foreign relations concerns in refusing to acknowledge a solution.
(Read: Trump’s racism has no consequences – and that’s scary)
And in 2022 Egbert v. Boulethe Court has again rejected a claim for damages after a Border Patrol agent allegedly used excessive force against a US citizen – on the citizen’s own property – and retaliated against him for his complaint.
These cases involved different doctrines and different fact patterns. But they all boil down to one truth: There aren’t many ways to hold the federal government or its employees financially liable for misconduct. And every time the Supreme Court drops a ruling, more doors slam shut Konan in the stack.
Monetary damages are a deterrent
Civil rights laws are much easier to ignore when violating them is free. Monetary damages are one of the few ways to reliably get a government’s attention.
Public institutions rarely decide to behave better because they have experienced a sudden burst of ethical clarity. Big organizations are reacting when they have to write big checks and then explain to taxpayers why they are spending millions on paying out settlements instead of implementing reforms to ensure that federal employees view the law as more than just a suggestion.
Research into police misconduct settlements bears this out. A national database of settlements published by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund has identified hundreds of cases in which payouts were followed by policy changes within police departments.
When the availability of monetary damages disappears, accountability begins to diminish. Enforcement becomes dependent on internal disciplinary mechanisms within federal agencies or on prosecutorial discretion. Often, the institution accused of misconduct simply conducts its own investigation to determine whether something bad actually happened. (sort of what the DOJ is doing now with the Epstein files.)
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Konan has not legalized discrimination. But if federal employees can deliberately withhold someone’s mail and the federal government never has to pay compensation for it, the incentives to behave lawfully disappear. The incentives to deliver mail to everyone, regardless of their skin color or ownership status, are diminishing.
The law can say what they are not allowed to do.
But the budget tells them what they can get away with.
Editor’s note (March 4, 2026): The cover, or summary, of this story has been updated for clarity.
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