Postal Service Wins Round in Legal Fight With Bush

A federal appeals court on Friday sided with the U.S. Postal Service and against President Bush in a yearlong dispute over stamp prices.

The decision stops Bush’s attempt to fire members of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors over the dispute.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia effectively rejected the Administration’s request to lift a lower court judge’s injunction prohibiting Bush from the firings.

Instead, the judges granted the Postal Service’s motion to challenge before them the independent Postal Rate Commission’s proposal for a discount 27-cent stamp for bar-coded mail.

Bush had sided with the rate commission in the dispute and had threatened earlier this month to fire a majority of the Board of Governors if it did not withdraw the suit in the appeals court.

U.S. Circuit Judges Patricia Wald, Stephen Williams and Karen LeCraft Henderson “granted in part” the Postal Service’s request to challenge the Postal Rate Commission’s approval of the proposed 27-cent stamp. They gave the Postal Service until April 16 to file briefs in the case.

The ruling rejected for the time being the Administration’s claim that Bush has constitutional authority over the Postal Service and that the agency can only go to court through his attorney general.