Supreme Court won’t take up UPS bid to raise Postal Service prices

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case brought forward by UPS that sought to change how the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) charges for delivering packages.

The justices, in an unsigned order, rejected UPS’s request to appeal a lower court ruling upholding the postal service’s pricing methods. The delivery company had sought to force the federal Postal Service to raise its prices, claiming that it has an unfair advantage over its private competitors.

{mosads}“[P]ostal pricing has departed from Congress’s requirement that the Postal Service compete on a level playing field with private companies for package delivery,” UPS had argued to the Supreme Court.

The order is also a win for Amazon, which uses USPS to deliver packages. The company had backed USPS in the legal challenge.

The Trump administration has pushed for USPS to make changes that could potentially raise shipping rates for some packages.

The administration’s USPS task force said in a report issued in December that the service should be able to charge higher rates for e-commerce goods and other “nonessential” packages. That would likely be a blow to Amazon, a regular target of President Trump’s criticism.