Postal Service v. Konan · ¶63

Beyond that basic insight, however, Congress’s express in- clusion of “negligent transmission” provides other important clues for deciphering statutory meaning about the scope of the postal exception.As the majority recognizes, if Con- gress had included all claims arising out of the “transmis- sion” of mail in the postal exception, the term “would have encompassed claims that involved mail even though nothing went wrong with its transport or delivery.”Ante, at 405. To avoid that outcome, Congress needed to add a narrowing modifier to focus on when things go wrong.

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