Almost every serious deadline in Minnesota law starts with an envelope.
A tax-forfeiture surplus claim form. A credit bureau’s response to a dispute. A hearing notice. In each case the law doesn’t ask whether you read it. It asks whether it was sent.
On February 24, 2026, the Supreme Court held 5–4 that if the Postal Service fails to deliver that envelope — even on purpose — you can’t sue the United States for it.
What Konan decided
Lebene Konan owned two rental properties in Euless, Texas. She didn’t claim the mail got lost. She claimed postal employees intentionally withheld her mail, changed mailbox ownership without her consent, returned her mail as undeliverable, and refused to release mail being held. Her rental business took the hit. She sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act for nuisance, tortious interference, conversion, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The FTCA is how the United States waives sovereign immunity for certain torts. But the waiver has exceptions, and one of them — 28 U.S.C. § 2680(b), the “postal exception” — keeps immunity in place for any claim “arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”
Konan’s argument made a lot of sense to a lot of readers. Congress wrote “negligent transmission.” That adjective says the exception covers carelessness, not deliberate misconduct. Nobody “negligently” refuses to deliver mail out of spite.
Justice Thomas, writing for the majority, didn’t buy it. His reasons:
- “Miscarriage,” as people ordinarily understood it when the FTCA was enacted in 1946, meant any failure of mail to reach its intended destination — regardless of intent. Usage at the time covered stolen and burned mail.
- “Loss” meant a deprivation of mail no matter how it came about. Someone else’s intentional act can deprive you of it.
- “Negligent” modifies only “transmission.” Congress put the adjective in front of the last item in the list, and an adjective attached to the final noun in a series can’t be moved backward onto the earlier ones.
Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson. Her core objection was that “no one intentionally loses something,” that the majority’s reading leaves “negligent transmission” with little work to do, and that the FTCA’s other safeguards — the scope-of-employment requirement, the intentional-tort exception — already screen out the frivolous claims the majority worried about.
The judgment was vacated and remanded.
The Minnesota problem this creates
Minnesota doesn’t just use the mail. Minnesota law keeps making the mailing itself the legal event. Two examples:
Tax-forfeiture surplus claims. After Tyler v. Hennepin County, the Legislature built a claims procedure into Minn. Stat. § 282.005. The county auditor mails a notice and claim form, and the claim must be filed within six months from the date the notice is first mailed — not from the day you opened it. We wrote about that clock here.
Response deadlines in litigation. Minn. R. Civ. P. 6.01(e) provides that when a document is served by United States Mail, “3 days shall be added to the prescribed period.” Three days. That’s the whole cushion Minnesota gives you for the postal system. (If you learned this as Rule 6.05, that rule was abrogated effective January 1, 2020 and its text folded into 6.01(e).)
Now set Konan next to that list. Minnesota law assumes the mail works. Federal law now says that when it doesn’t — through carelessness or something worse — the outfit responsible is immune from a damages suit.
The loss doesn’t go away. It lands on whoever was supposed to get the envelope.
What still works
Konan closed one door. Not all of them. That difference matters a great deal.
The FTCA claim against the Postal Service is barred. That’s the holding. A damages suit against the United States arising from nondelivery isn’t going to get past § 2680(b), whether the nondelivery was negligent or intentional.
What happens because of the nondelivery is a separate question. Whether a deadline should be enforced against someone who truly never got notice isn’t governed by the FTCA at all. It’s governed by the statute or rule that created the deadline, by due process, and in Minnesota by doctrines like excusable neglect under Rule 60.02(a) and the relief available to a defendant not actually personally notified. Losing the right to sue the mail carrier is not the same as losing the argument that a clock shouldn’t have run.
Remedies short of a lawsuit are still there. Complaints to the Postal Service, referrals to the Postal Inspection Service (mail theft and obstruction of correspondence are federal crimes), and Postal Regulatory Commission processes aren’t touched by a decision about tort damages.
The practical version
If your legal position in Minnesota depends on getting your mail — and that’s nearly everyone with a mortgage, a tax bill, a lawsuit, or a credit report:
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Keep your address of record current everywhere, one by one. The county, the recorder, the mortgage servicer, the court, and each credit bureau keep their own address. Updating one updates none of the others. Mail forwarding runs out.
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For anything with a clock on it, use a method that leaves a record. Certified mail, return receipt, tracking, and — for disputes and demands you send — a copy you keep with the tracking number attached. After Konan, your proof is worth more than your grievance.
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Turn on the free tools. USPS Informed Delivery emails you a daily scan of incoming mail. It isn’t perfect, but it turns “I never got it” from your word into something with a paper trail behind it.
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Treat a gap in expected mail as urgent, not annoying. If a bill you always get stops showing up, or a bureau never answers a dispute, the real risk usually isn’t the missing document. It’s the deadline attached to the document you didn’t know existed.
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If you find out a deadline already ran, how fast you respond is the case. The argument that you lacked actual notice is strongest when you make it the moment you find out.
A closing thought
There’s a grim symmetry here. The postal exception is one of the oldest carve-outs in the FTCA, written in 1946 for a Post Office Department that handled a nation’s mail and couldn’t possibly answer in tort for every misdirected letter. That reasoning isn’t crazy.
But the world it was written for didn’t use mailing as a substitute for actual notice the way modern statutes do. A mailed form now stands in for telling someone their equity is about to go to the county.
The Court has held that the system carrying those notices owes nothing in damages when it fails. So the job of making sure the envelope arrives has quietly moved to the person with the most to lose if it doesn’t.
If a deadline passed on a notice you never got — a foreclosure, a tax forfeiture, a lawsuit, or a credit dispute — how strong your response is depends heavily on how fast you make it after you find out. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: United States Postal Service v. Konan, 607 U. S. 391 (2026) (Thomas, J.), No. 24–351, argued October 8, 2025, decided February 24, 2026 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting, joined by Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson, JJ.), vacating and remanding 96 F.4th 799; 28 U.S.C. § 2680(b); Minn. Stat. § 282.005; Minn. R. Civ. P. 6.01(e) and 60.02 (Rule 6.05 abrogated effective January 1, 2020) (Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes). This article is general commentary on a published decision, federal statutes, and Minnesota law — not legal advice — and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Whether any particular deadline can be reopened depends entirely on the facts. No outcome is promised or implied.