This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit released its long-awaited decision on the United States Postal Service (USPS) exigency case. In general, the decision provides very good news for the mailing community by agreeing with our assessment that the 4.3% exigent–emergency—rate increase adopted in 2013 should not be made permanent.

At 4pm Tuesday, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) announced its approval of an exigent rate increase of 4.3%, the full amount requested in September by the U.S. Postal Service. Commented David LeDuc, SIIA’s senior director, public policy, “We are extremely disappointed that the PRC chose to move forward with the exigent rate increase, as this action places a significant cost burden on many of our members. With the previously approved CPI increase of 1.7% and the announcement today of the 4.3% exigent rate increase, the full amount of this year’s increase equals 6.0%. The only bright spot in the Commission’s ruling today was the denial of the Postal Service’s request to make the increases permanent, instead the Commission ruled the exigent increase is only applicable for ‘less than two years.’”