Update on Bonidy et al v. USPS et al

In the first part of October, attorney Jim Manley and the Mountain States Legal Foundation sued the United States Postal Service on behalf of Colorado residents Debbie and Tab Bonidy. The National Association for Gun Rights is also a party to the lawsuit as an organizational plaintiff. The suit was brought to challenge the USPS’s ban on functional firearms on any Postal Service property with few limited exceptions.

An amended lawsuit has now been filed in the case. There is little change in the amended complaint when compared to the original complaint. The first changes are that Postmaster General John Potter and Avon, Colorado Postmaster Steve Ruehle are now only being sued in their official capacities. The earlier complaint had both men being sued in both their official and individual capacities.

The remaining changes are, for the most part, stylistic in nature. For example, in paragraph 26 of the amended complaint, relief is asked from “continued enforcement and maintenance of Defendants’ unconstitutional laws, customs, practices, and policies.”

The first post on the lawsuit was picked up by a web news service for USPS managers and employees about two weeks after the lawsuit was filed. The link from PostalNews was put up a few days after two Postal Service employees were murdered at a small post office in western Tennessee. From the comments, you would have thought that Jim Manley was proposing some obscure pagan ritual involving human sacrifice.

One anti-gun postmistress went so far as to brag how she even made uniformed law enforcement officers leave their service weapons in their police cruiser rather than to allow a firearm into her post office. As it is, the murder of the Henning, TN USPS employees was committed by a (still) unknown assailant who chose to ignore both the USPS laws and regulations banning firearms and the criminal laws of the State of Tennessee regarding homicide.