morning your honour's brian towed from the department of justice representing the appellant the office of the navajo and hopi indian relocation which i refer to as oh near by its acronym i like to i had an acronym in my head but i was pronouncing it differently so i'll go with yours i'll try to sit down with three minutes on the clock right the district court erred in two main respects here st to apply the incorrect legal standard for determining whether the applicant is a resident of the hopi partition lands at the time that she became self supporting in august of one thousand nine hundred and three and nd under the correct standard the district court should have concluded that the agency's decision was supported by substantial evidence and therefore must be upheld  trying st to the correct legal standard the district court said that the standard was merely one of substantial recurring contact contacts that is simply incorrect the same district judge a year later in the jackson case that we cited  our reply eighty nine case that is on appeal rejected the standard of nearly one substantial recurring contacts and instead applied what we believe is the correct standard relying on the legal residence test in the standard the district court should have upheld own years decision because a rational fact finder could have concluded that the applicant did not intend to reside and had not objective we manifested that intent relied on now and in this case my understanding is that mr rose doesn't disagree with you on the standard is that right that's my understanding but we'll ask but yes i mean if we could talk about the role of substantial contacts you know post nine hundred and eighty four when that provision was a limited from the regulation but you know i'll focus on the record unless the court has particular questions on how those standards interact  you know i think that it may help for the court to focus on the regulation at twenty five c f r seven hundred point six nine eight two which is actually it's not the definition of residence but it's a definition of household for the term head of household and it says that a single person who at the time of her residence on land partition to the tribe which she's not a member actually maintained and support herself so that's where residence comes into play it's looking at residence as of the time she actually maintained and support the hopi partition lands beginning in august one thousand eight hundred and three and later after she went to college so you know it she has not presented the evidence that she was at actually maintaining and supporting herself while she were sighted on those of the excerpts of record st the applicants families residents at the trailer and many farms and then nd together with the applicants enrollment in the many farms chapter for purposes of a voting now the district asli said that the hearing officer had only relied on a single event meaning the selection of the many farms chapter four of her where she would be registered but in fact the officers decision relies on the applicants a long time residents in many farms at the trailer where her it was owned by her dad's aunt and where the family were resided for a dozen years or so while she was growing up while she went to school on a daily basis while she went to high school in the nearby town of channeling and so that was enough evidence in the in the record to support a rational conclusion that she did not intend to reside elsewhere when she went off to college in august of one thousand nine hundred and three furthermore the hearing officer relied on the decision that the applicant made to register with the many farms chapter which would mean that was where she would get to vote this made sense you know she explains it as well this was just a practical decision that's where i could obtain grant money better than registering with the chapter where her maternal aunt lived but regardless i mean i think there was the hearing officer was reasonable and relying on the applicant's choice when she became a teen to make that decision make that election on her own and live with the legal consequences of that both in terms of college financing and in terms of these government benefits for relocation in addition there are other objective facts that support the hearing officers decision that you know were mentioned in his decision but not expressly relied on in his you know the final page of his decision the applicant was residing she was an employed part time during school in many farms there is evidence in the record that she was working at a job in the mornings before going to school and that she was working on winter break there as well the you know the argument that the applicant makes the office had to treat her identically to her mother who did also receive benefits and cornu the applicant had the same patterns of residency while the applicant was growing up i think that up to argument should be rejected on several  set of findings of fact that the agency would make if the award were supported by the education to the hearing officer actually did make detail findings of fact denying her benefits and it was only after  litigation that the the agency settled the case and decided to order benefits but i don't think the agencies a stopped for all purposes and forced to square every factual aspect of this case with what we can hypothesize please the court t v jones rapidly miss charles you just heard a great deal about all of these objective facts that supposedly point to this charles's residence at the many farms rather then and he stole but it's we need to remember what the baseline is that we're starting with the hearing officer explicitly found at  incapable of choosing their own davos sile and when a person obtains majority you don't start from scratch or your heirs are already a baseline so and under that baseline she was already a legal resident of the hopi partition land is something that she had to affirmatively act to change that residency and wouldn't joe registering at many farms be that affirmative act an expression that's an intent to change or domicile what constitutes substantial evidence depends on the nature of the case that the of the question that a case involves and focusing on one piece of evidence may be sufficient for some cases but the nature of residency is that you can't consider isolated factors as i said there's just no consent in american law that allows for just one factor instead it requires a balancing of all the evidence but disturbed on the entire record as it was meant to do under the a p a and i would like to counsel mention the the standard and we want to be very clear we do not are our position we agree that intent is required but substantial mckern contacts and intent are not mutually exclusive rather substantial more current contacts can manifest a person's intent to reside at a particular place and in this case we have both of those testified as to what her intent was and the hearing officer found that intent to be credible that e r one hundred and ninety one dollars she testified that she received it to register for the many firms chapter for the sole purpose of receiving scholarships at the e r sixty six dollars but that during the relevant time period she considered she's still her home that's a e r sixty six to sixty seven and the district court repeatedly recognize what the correct standard was he repeatedly cited to the eligibility regulations and one thousand nine hundred for korea and what he did is he arrived at the same conclusion that owner has settled on for decades that substantial more current contacts joined the many farms chapter because she could not i'm quoting she could not obtain college assistance from cheese to chapter so that those are the exact same facts that the hearing officer relied on in his st decision to find that mr charles was a legal resident of the h p o and nothing in the record changed between the original decision and the revised decision all that happened was that in response to the government's suggestion that the hearing officer place dispositive weight on her many farms registration to the exclusion of all other evidence and without legal support and once that legal error is placed aside the record remains clear that mr charles was in a legal resident and let's look at exactly why that was a legal error as are already mentioned the nature of substantial evidence depends on the on the nature of the question and the hearing officer here made made this is her nation place this dispositive way on chapter membership without any legal authority under the either the settlement act or domicile law generally and there's just there's just when you look at domicile law and the a p a there's no single fact is supposed to be controlling you're supposed to look at the totality of the circumstances and i  officer said as follows that the seminal event that transfers legal residence and she falls into would electing to become a member of the many forms chapter which eliminated her claim to legal residence and did so from that time for you disagree with that so we disagree that the fact that she thought that the chapter membership should have had that dispositive weight if you look at remember we have to start at the base that changed that to that does shows that she made an affirmative act to change her legal residency and i'd like to go to the point that counsel pointed out about twenty five  difference between physical occupancy and legal residence and you need as i've said you need an affirmative act to transfer legal residence and going away to college is a classic example of being temporarily away or just simply changing your physical location and the government is arguing that there we need to and or we somehow need to show exactly when she that she became a head of household while she was still an h b o legal resident and we know that she relocated some time after that because while she was away in college the deadline to relocate for all residents to relocate from the bill that was july th one thousand nine hundred and six so after that time it was not possible for her to return to the h b o as a legal resident she under now  to her mother's home and after that she was not able to do so let's look to the mother's circumstances that that show that this was an art that this was that the hearing officers reliance on are on  placing dispositive way on chapter residents chapter membership was arbitrary and capricious as i'm sure your honour's are well aware consistent treatment is required by the a p a the the hearing officer cannot just part from standards that it's already had and the mother the the the government admitted to the district court that the mother and when she was found to be a resident in one thousand nine hundred and seventy four she was also read this is that  to twenty at no seven that she was a many firms chapter member she was at many farms chapter membership just like her daughter was and she also had a similar right as residency pattern so that further shows that the hearing officer invented this disqualifying distinction without any legal support thank you thank you thank you your hon you like to respond to a couple of the points but st i want to remind the court of the standard for view with substantial evidence it doesn't mean that the facts can't point in different directions or that reasonable persons couldn't disagree as to what the correct solution is it's simply a trust see agency with the goal of making that decision in the st instance and so long as that decision is based on a rational view a rational view of the facts that should be upheld so  to that date but i don't think that stipulation prevents the hearing officer from looking at her pattern of daily residence while she was growing up certainly you know just as her weekend visits continued her pattern of daily residence in the spring of  three through her graduation continued she was still going daily the high school inch in length she testified she worked it was employed in the mornings there in many many farms area so i don't think the hearing officer is precluded or this court is precluded from looking at the pattern that it continued for her day to day life farm simply because of the stipulation as to the statement that there had to be an affirmative act to change domicile you know this is this is analogous to domicile law in some ways but this statute in these regulations are really their own creatures and they have to be taken on their own terms and so i would urge the court not to adopt too many of the very specific principles of domicile law there's nothing in the regulations or the regulatory preamble that says there that you know there's a presumption of some sort once domiciles established or once residency is established and in fact the burden is placed by the regulations upon the applicant to show residence and the date in question that's at issue here is you know it's in this regulation seven hundred point six nine eight  to the time when she legally supported herself so i'd urge the court to look to the regulations for the standards and not to the analogous principles in domicile law and unless the court has any further questions we would ask that the district court's decision be reversed and that the agency's denial of benefits be affirmed because i have one quick question that is ms jones talked about the head of household concept was having been contemporaneous with majority virtually you agree reaching the age of majority without showing we're not necessarily i think the agency looks to income as a preliminary matter and perhaps we'll hear more in that the next case where that struck leadership but i don't think it's simply reaching the age of eighteen because to show that you actually supported and maintain yourself and thank you i think both counsel for your argument this morning charles versus on here is submitted