to your honor's me please the court i come here today to argue on behalf of the plaintiffs who are retired police officers in the city of white plains i come here to argue basically three points at the court below it errored we think the court below error in regarding that the section two hundred and ninety five of the collective bargaining agreement a fair reading of that document where that paragraph which show that it is ambiguous i also would like to argue to this court that there was no legitimate public purpose for the may th resolution and finally i'd like to argue to this court that there is a valid th amendment claim that i think exists in section does it mean the same thing that it does in the taylor law no you see here and i think the judge that was a reach i don't think it means that and i think i think that the reason why it comes to that is because under the taylor law this was a purely a past practice that had been expanded and by in agreement there was  actually was is supposed to be just the past practice there is no doubt that in this case all of the employees had been hired that they had been told and that the judge never looked at but it's clear that all the people who testified in this case if they had been told that they were receiving less money because they were going to get benefits in their retirement and that's the record we have in the record so i do not think that it applies to this clause that's  retirees whatever they are and that employees try to get them to go to work right i think that in this case i always believe in law that when there is something done that's wrong there's got to be a recourse and this court in this case i think that's  but they had they had a benefit they had a retirement some of these people would you know it sounds like nothing fifteen percent of your income sounds like of the benefit turned out that some of these people who are retired who are younger who is eating  and seventy percent of their retirement benefit that little small fifteen percent so that gentleman is is deceased at this point because ninety seven years old when he died but all i'm saying to the court is that they retired and they had  pick practice they had this is an employee and i think that for them to be able to be later on to be this enfranchise with this benefit that they all knew they had that the city made no bo giving them that this city had pamphlets when you retired this and hey you get this in your retirement you know forever or all of the opponents similarly situated that is are all the opponents that all of them retire under the collective bargaining why i say and it wasn't all into the case for a little bit that we asked the court for an amendment which was graciously given for the th amendment because i don't see a difference between these people these these groups of officers they're all working we made a list in our brief of the things that they did similarly and the judge came back and the judge said well wait a minute they didn't collectively bargain they didn't give up their salary they didn't submit to drug clause i think that there is there is an argument here that we would like to proffer to the court that in the contract there was a obligation on the municipality to continue their payments into into retirement there was no legitimate public purpose for an act in the may th two thousand and ten resolution the one of the arguments that made you have said that the legislative interest in addressing a fiscal emergency is a legitimate public interest but there was no fiscal emergency that's my dispute that i dispute that because the bond rating moody's which is probably one of the better ways to decide you know there are some municipalities this is a buffalo for instance had huge deficits their bond rating went terribly low in this case the bond rating for the city why play what is one  and eighty one throughout the entire time from when the alleged crisis started in probably up to today i don't know so we say that there was work they facing a possibility of having to raise property taxes charge who had worked for the city white lines who said that all of these issues were dismissed by the time this proclamation was a resolution was passed in two thousand i can w i have to but my point is is that the bond rating never changed maybe there would have had to been a raise in taxes but that was all talk it never came to fruition and there was never a change in the bond rating so we think maybe this measure is one of the things that have preserved a sound bond rating for the city and i don't i don't think so your  honor and i don't think that the small amount of money that is meant one hundred and ten million dollars budget is one million dollars is which is about what this would have cost is really significant in so far as that's a concern so i point out to the fact that in the contract clause head of the judge looked to the exchange of evidence to some extent they would have seen the statements made by eric benson and william carey people who had said that that past practice is a percentage of what was being enjoyed as the retirees would continue and all of these they really put some of these in our brief for the court so we think that the judge should have taken that next step and looked at the intrinsic evidence which i think would have been very important for her did you review waived this contract clause argument and see it in your brief regard to the contract or more specifically the lack of a contract here is to lumber will be addressing the other issues you're honest to the extent that the breach of contract issue is actually before the court and judge park you correctly note as we have pointed out that there is a question as to whether that was waived what the plaintiffs are asking the court to do is to write into the contract that they already retired under the sentence that does not appear that sentence is the city of white plains will pay one hundred percent of the premium costs of retiree health insurance for employees hired before july one  five that provision is not in this contract there was a provision as you know that talks about people hired after july one thousand nine hundred and ninety five but what they're asking for doesn't exist they asked for it during the course of collective bargaining on three different occasions on each of those occasions the city said no with regard to section twenty nine dollars some five it is not a past practice clause for the reasons that we argue with in our brief instead it is a rights and benefits cla is the court is noted there are basically five things the plaintiffs have to establish none of which they've established st off it applies only to employees not to retirees nd off it applies to rights and benefits  will come back to that rd it has to be a right and benefit presently enjoyed employees by definition cannot read enjoy a retirement benefit employees can enjoy benefits that are not specified in the contract that's where the line which talks about presently enjoyed the union tried on several occasions to expand that clause during collective bargaining to say that the protection would cover past practices the city said no previously enjoyed practices and benefits the city said no and future benefits and the city said no it has to cover a term a condition of employment jacobs you one hundred percent correct that is a term of art it explicitly relates to the taylor law found the civil service thought section two hundred dollars at sec that's where their company that's where that comes from and perhaps even more importantly the contract provision requires the writing benefit to be specifically not specifically covered by the contract it's undisputed that the contract addresses health insurance and the contract addresses retiree health insurance finally your honour's the court did address the parole evidence and it's the city it's all over the decision she a judge b a contract doesn't exist then the contract clause claim is going to fail and so for the reasons that mr circle has just discussed and established there is no contract and the cut that constitutional claim would wouldn't would not prevail for that matter  assume the existence of the contract then the contracts claim clause claim will fail for two reasons the st is not mentioned by the plaintiffs in their opposition to a motion for summary judgment they didn't mention it and with the constitutional claim rather than the contract claim that well that is that's a very interesting question your honor the the only reason we're in federal court is because they pled a constitutional claim the as i heard it from mr maria the only issues before us are the contracts clause claim and the section two constitution claims not the contract  well your honor i think the contract is an issue before the court because it is a fundamental prerequisite of that st constitutional claim the existence of a contract maybe even before you get to the question of doesn't legislation  contract you have to st reach the question is there a contract to begin to understand that i'm asking a slightly higher order question about whether we've got to deal with that st question about whether there was a whether there's a contract and my view because they haven't established the existence of a contract that the contract clause claim should be rejected on that st ground right there and the entire case would be dismissed at that point with the exception i suppose there's going to be consideration of the equal protection claim but i think the court can easily rule and dismiss or affirm the dismissal of the contrast plus claim by coming to the conclusion based upon the record in the your comments that there was no contract that guaranteed these particular plaintiffs one hundred percent free health insurance and retirement for the rest of their lives and in the absence of that contract his constitutional claim for violation of the contracts clause would  il if you assume the contract the constitutional claim still fails for two reasons one is that there is the legislation in question here which is the main two thousand and ten ordinance does not impair a contractual obligation it doesn't say to the point is if you believe that your contract and we're assuming one exists was breached you have no recourse in court for breach of contract and so when all other plaintiff has is a breach of contract and not a claim that a particular piece of legislation before close to a remedy for breach of contract then the contract claimed would fit contracts clause claim would fail on that ground and that the same thing is saying that the contract not necessarily wrong because the if you have a if you have the contract exists and a piece of legislation an alleged breach of that contract the legislation can either say you can't go forward at all you can't you know the no there is no remedy to begin with or go ahead and sue and if you can resistance and a breach of all the other elements for breach of contract breach of contract claim under state law you know then you would prevail so the in this particular case the ordinance does not he said there's no the contract doesn't exist so they would feel on that ground the nd so that's the st point in terms of the constitutional claim there's there's no impairment of contract at the most there's a potential breach of contract and therefore it should be dismissed on that ground nd just to address the legitimate public purpose and the reason a means test unless your honor has a question as you thirty seconds go ok the was the great was when it went from a negative outlook to stable outlook ok real quick on the equal protection clause that claim is not directed at the two thousand and ten ordinance that claim is directed at a collective bargaining agreement that  was reached in approximately two thousand and fifteen and had a term of two thousand and twelve to two thousand and eighteen it's undisputed none of the plaintiffs here were employees of the city when that collective bargaining agreement was reached that fighters injured on the job to get certain benefits there was a random drug testing program there were lower starting salaries for new hires the current employees as of two thousand and fifteen were all in a position to give those trade ups all the trade offs up in exchange for benefits under the agreement the plaintiffs were not so they're not similarly situated under the and for that reason the country and the additional reason so we stayed in our brief the equal protection claus