746
Opinion of the Court
as a Sherman Act treble damage action plaintiff" (footnote omitted)).
The remaining question, then, is whether for purposes of the antitrust laws the Postal Service is a person separate from the United States itself. It is not. The statutory designation of the Postal Service as an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States" is not consistent with the idea that it is an entity existing outside the Government. The statutory instruction that the Postal Service is an establishment "of the executive branch of the Government of the United States" indicates just the contrary. The PRA gives the Postal Service a high degree of independence from other offices of the Government, but it remains part of the Government. The Sherman Act defines "person" to include corporations, and had the Congress chosen to create the Postal Service as a federal corporation, we would have to ask whether the Sherman Act's definition extends to the federal entity under this part of the definitional text. Congress, however, declined to create the Postal Service as a Government corporation, opting instead for an independent establishment. The choice of words likely was more informed than unconsidered, because Congress debated proposals to make the Postal Service a Government corporation before it enacted the PRA. See H. R. Rep. No. 91-1104, p. 6 (1970).
As we have noted, the PRA refers in explicit terms to
various federal statutes and specifies that the Postal Service is exempt from some and subject to others. 39 U. S. C. §§ 409-410. It makes no mention of the Sherman Act or the antitrust laws, however. The silence leads to no helpful inference one way or the other on the issue before us; but the other considerations we have discussed lead us to say that absent an express statement from Congress that the Postal Service can be sued for antitrust violations despite its status as an independent establishment of the Government of the
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