Four civil rights resolutions prepared by Attorney Howlette earn unanimous support of ABA CRSJ Section

On April 6, 2026, Managing Attorney Jordan D. Howlette of Justly Prudent presented four resolutions to the Council of the American Bar Association's Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice ("CRSJ") during the Section's conference meeting. All four resolutions received a unanimous vote from the Council to sponsor the measures for consideration by the ABA House of Delegates, the Association's nearly 600-member policymaking body that will next convene at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago from July 29 through August 4, 2026.

The resolutions address what Justly Prudent describes as systemic gaps in federal employment and civil rights law—gaps that leave workers with fewer protections, shorter deadlines, and in some cases, no legal remedy at all.

Resolution 1: Equal Filing Deadlines for Federal Employees

The first resolution tackles a disparity that has quietly undermined federal workers' ability to fight back against discrimination for decades. Under current law, a federal employee who experiences discrimination on the job has just 45 calendar days to contact an Equal Employment Opportunity counselor—and only 15 days after that to file a formal complaint. By contrast, a private-sector worker, a state employee, or a local government employee facing the same kind of discrimination has at least 180 days, and in most states, 300 days, to file a charge with the EEOC.

The resolution urges Congress to eliminate this disparity by extending the federal employee deadlines to match those available to every other worker in the country. Specifically, it calls for replacing the 45-day counselor contact deadline with a period of no fewer than 180 days, and replacing the 15-day formal complaint window with no fewer than 90 days. It also urges the EEOC to use its existing regulatory authority to extend these deadlines to the fullest extent possible.

Resolution 2: A Uniform 300-Day Filing Deadline Nationwide

The second resolution targets a geographic gap in discrimination protections that falls hardest on the communities that need those protections most. Currently, workers in the 45 states that have their own anti-discrimination agencies have 300 days to file a charge with the EEOC. Workers in the five states without such an agency—Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina—have only 180 days.

Those five states are all located in the Deep South. They are home to some of the highest proportions of African American residents in the nation and generate the highest per-capita rates of workplace discrimination charges. In other words, the workers who face the most discrimination have the least time to do anything about it.

The resolution urges Congress to establish a uniform 300-day filing deadline for all workers nationwide, regardless of where they live. It also calls for fixing a parallel gap in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, where the extended deadline is triggered only by state laws—not local laws—and urges the remaining states and territories to enact their own comprehensive anti-discrimination statutes.

Resolution 3: Closing the Government Contract Interference Loophole

The third resolution addresses a gap in the law that most people do not know exists until they fall through it. When a federal employee, acting within the scope of their job, deliberately and improperly interferes with a private person's contractual relationship, the injured party has no legal remedy. The Federal Tort Claims Act bars suit against the United States for interference with contract rights, and a separate statute—the Westfall Act—shields the individual federal employee from personal liability. The result is a complete remedial vacuum: the wrong is real, the harm is concrete, but there is no courtroom door to walk through.

The resolution urges Congress to remove "interference with contract rights" from the FTCA's list of excepted claims, so that the government can be held liable for tortious interference in the same way a private person would be under state law. Importantly, the resolution preserves the discretionary function exception, ensuring that legitimate government policy decisions remain protected even as improper interference does not.

Resolution 4: Overturning the Supreme Court's Postal Immunity Ruling

The fourth resolution responds directly to one of the most troubling Supreme Court decisions of the year. In February 2026, the Court ruled five to four in United States Postal Service v. Konan that the Federal Tort Claims Act's postal exception bars all claims arising from the nondelivery of mail—even when a postal worker deliberately refuses to deliver mail because of a recipient's race.

The facts of the case make the stakes painfully clear. Lebene Konan, a Black landlord in Euless, Texas, alleged that Postal Service employees intentionally withheld mail from two of her rental properties for approximately two years. She alleged they did so because they objected to a Black woman owning property and renting rooms to white tenants. The mail withholding caused her to lose tenants and suffer substantial economic harm. When she sued, the Supreme Court held that the postal exception shielded the government from liability—and the Westfall Act separately shielded the individual employees. The result was that Konan had no legal path to hold anyone accountable.

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson, dissented sharply, arguing that the majority's reading transforms the postal exception from a narrow shield against routine operational mishaps into blanket immunity for intentional, racially motivated misconduct.

The resolution urges Congress to amend the postal exception so that it no longer bars claims arising from the intentional withholding, refusal to deliver, destruction, or other deliberate mishandling of mail when the conduct is motivated by discriminatory animus based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information. The resolution preserves the Postal Service's immunity for routine negligent mail handling—a lost letter, a delayed package, a misdirected catalog—while ensuring that deliberate, discriminatory conduct can no longer hide behind a shield designed for something else entirely.

"No private mail carrier in America could refuse to deliver someone's mail because of their race and escape accountability," said Managing Attorney Jordan D. Howlette. "The Postal Service should not be able to either. These four resolutions share a common principle: when the law leaves people without a remedy for real harm, the law needs to change."

The CRSJ Council's unanimous vote means the Section will now formally sponsor all four resolutions for consideration by the ABA House of Delegates. If adopted by the House, the resolutions would become official ABA policy, empowering the Association to advocate publicly for the legislative reforms they propose.