On April 28, the First Circuit refused to re-hear Del Gallo v Parent, 08-1511. The original decision, issued on February 25, equated petitioning for a candidate on interior post office sidewalks with “campaigning”, and then went on the uphold the Post Office regulation against campaigning on postal interior sidewalks. The ACLU will decide soon whether to appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the case against a separate postal regulation against petitioning on interior sidewalks is still pending in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. That case is Initiative & Referendum Institute v US Postal Service, and it was filed in the year 2000.
Once again, the Postal Service gets to pick and choose when it wants to be a private entity and when it wants to be a public entity. It’s about time we prosecute the Postal Service for theft of government property. After all, every Postal Service truck has a federal government license plate on it. No other “private” corporation has this privilege.