Currier

We must decide various regulatory, statutory, and constitutional challenges to United States Postal Service policies regarding general delivery mail service and the provision of no-fee postal boxes to homeless persons.

I

Carl Currier, David Bar, and Willard Johnson are homeless persons in Seattle, Washington. Lacking physical addresses, they have found it difficult to receive mail. Although some homeless shelters will accept mail on behalf of residents, they will only hold mail for a limited time and mail theft in shelters is a recurring problem. In May and June 2000, they inquired about three United States Postal Service (the “Postal Service”) services: postal box rental, no-fee postal boxes, and general delivery. Under then-existing postal regulations, a person lacking a physical address who sought to rent a postal box had to provide a driver’s license or a verifiable point of contact (such as a homeless shelter), or, alternatively, had to be known personally by the postmaster or box clerk. See Postal Bulletin 21877 at 7 (Sept. 29, 1994).

No-fee postal boxes are available to customers who are ineligible for carrier delivery service. See Domestic Mail Manual D910.5.1(a)…

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

I concur in the judgment in this case, and I join Judge O’Scannlain’s opinion except as to Parts III.A and III.B. I write separately first to express my view that the First Amendment challenge to the Post Office’s delivery policies should be considered under at least the limited public forum doctrine. Nonetheless, even under that doctrine, I reject the Appellants’ facial challenge to the Post Office’s delivery policies. I also write separately to discuss an issue that we do not reach, one that the Appellants did not advance and that the majority opinion explicitly leaves open in its footnote nine. This deferred issue is whether the Post Office’s general delivery regulations are constitutionally permissible if, in application to an individual person, they substantially burden that person’s right to receive mail. This issue will squarely arise in an “as applied” challenge asserted by a homeless person who demonstrates an inability reasonably to *733 gain access to general delivery mail at the main Post Office branch.

That a segment of citizens of our great country are left by the struggles of life with no home is unfortunate, to say the…