The U.S. Postal Service is hoping to prevent organizations such as the Affordable Mail Alliance and the Direct Marketing Association from intervening in its appeal of the Postal Regulatory Commission’s (PRC) decision to deny a request for an exigent rate increase. A copy of a motion filed by the USPS on Nov. 18 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was obtained by PostCom and posted here. The petition names 11 “would-be intervenors”  that the USPS claims were not parties in the rate case and, “accordingly, they are not entitled to intervene as of right.” The commentators mentioned in motion include Newspaper Association of America, Time Warner Inc., Valassis Direct Mail, the Affordable Mail Alliance, the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, the Association for Postal Commerce, the Direct Marketing Association, the Magazine Publishers of America, the National Postal Policy Council, American Business Media and the National Newspaper Association. The motion goes on to insist that allowing these 11 organizations to intervene in the current review proceeding “would unduly burden the original parties and this court” and interfere with the court’s ability to resolve the matter at hand. “The would-be intervenors have made no showing that their interest in having lower postage prices is any different from that of dozens of others who filed comments with the PRC – or hundreds of millions of others who use the U.S. Mail. Allowing entities with such a generalized interest to participate as parties would likely result in undue delay and distraction,” the USPS wrote in the motion. In early July, the USPS requested an exigent rate increase, which is an increase in excess of a predetermined price cap necessitated by exceptional circumstances, which in this case was a significant decline in mail volume caused by the recession. In late September, the PRC denied the request, saying that the USPS failed to demonstrate that its financial woes are a result of a decline in mail volume. In October, the USPS filed a motion to appeal the PRC’s decision.