Washington, DC, August 24, 2021 – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today denied a mailers’ group’s request to stay the August 29th postal rate increase pending the outcome of the main litigation at the heart of this matter. “While we are obviously disappointed by the outcome,” said ACMA President & Executive Director Hamilton Davison, “we understood going in that the criteria for granting a stay is even more rigorous than those applied in actually deciding a case.”
The court’s merits panel offered no indication as to why it has ruled in this way. Mailers must now wait for a final decision on the case. Oral arguments are scheduled for Sept. 13th and a decision will be issued following this in the late fall or early part of 2021.
The mailers’ group is disputing the Postal Regulatory Commission’s grant of additional rate authority included ACMA, National Postal Policy Council, the Association for Postal Commerce, the Association for Magazine Media, Alliance for Nonprofit Mailers, Major Mailers Association and was supported by intervenors National Newspaper Association and News Media Alliance. The US Postal Service entered in support of the PRC’s decision even while filing its own suit that the authority did not go far enough and should be increased.
“While this is obviously not the outcome mailers had hoped for, the filing of a stay did allow mailers to get declarations of harm before the court, information that would not have been on the record otherwise,” ACMA’s Davison said. Beyond litigating the legality of the PRC’s grant of additional rate authority, mailers continue to be very active with Congress in pushing for postal reform legislation that cures over 90% of the financial issues the PRC is reacting to in the granting of additional rate authority.