well your argument first person this morning includes sixteen seventy four ad look at health care network versus stapleton and the consolidated case was bla thank you mr chief justice and may it please the court pension plans for religious non profits have been exempt from arrest for over thirty years whether or not the church established the plan in the contrary holding of the three courts below should be reversed for three reasons first the text does not require a church to establish benefit plans for someone else's employees second the government's consistent view over three decades has generated enormous reliance interest and warrants deference and third or formants would resurrect the precise problems that everyone understood the one nine hundred eighty amendment would fix i could start with the text and the main text at issue here is a graph see one of section one thousand and two thirty three and if you the government's brief actually has all the relevant provisions so i think that's the easiest if you want to look at their appendix and see one is reprinted on a one page is a leaven a so again we're looking at paragraph some paragraph c one of paragraph thirty three which everyone in this case agrees expands the original church plan definition and a now the only plausible reason that c one repeats the entire phrase a plan established and maintained by the church is congress intended that see one redefine and modify that entire phrase why there was a provision that was proposed that would have done very clearly what you think discrimination is now and congress did pass  a church affiliated organization right and that would have excluded it would have excluded plans that where the churches stablished and the pension board maintain and the other side i'm sorry a plant establish and the church so that's any plan established by this is the old language by the way right so here but that's any church plan plus the five includes a plan establish an exchange by a church affiliated organization is not a pension because the problem is that provision the way it read required the pension board to not only maintain it but it would have had to establish it and so that excluded but  your church affiliated organization right but it said and and so if if the church established it then it would have been a church planned established maintained by a church and it would have been a planned established and maintained by a pension board so i think the clear thing in terms of this an interrupt i mean the past piece of legislation is it came out in the last couple of days of this several year process and the change went unmentioned justice  is it's just implausible that that change when i noticed when it would have excluded all the plans that the religious community was up in arms about and all the plans that prompted the amendment in the first place still ms but there  you know there would be a simple way of accomplishing what you think this provision accomplishes you know something along the lines of just saying and the plan maintained by a church affiliated organization is a church plan or something like that it's it's very odd language the statutory language and i'm wondering why you think that congress chose to do would you think it chose to do in this perplexing way rather than in a straightforward way sure i don't i don't find it that that perplexing when when your version would have messed up when you tried to tried to put it all in thirty three a it would have by saying just a church plan it would have redefined all of a which had a second compound definition of it had to be a tax exempt under section five zero one but justice k let me cut to the chase here if i had started from scratch i don't know if i could have done this better i doubt it because it's so complicated but let's look at what actually apparatus now old so paragraph c itself expressly required the church to establish c plans and see plans had to include the church's own actual employees and congress did to huge things in paragraph c now it eliminated not only the expressed church stablished requirement but the very reason for that requirement in the first place namely that these plans include the church's own employees so what we have now today and i don't think this is just beauty and we know one thing we do know is that c one plans can be maintained wholly and completely and absolutely outside the church and can include soli completely and wholly outside the church all the employees of any tax exempt religiously affiliated employer so it just defies both common sense and our background understanding  to require the church to establish someone else's benefit plans when we know employers are usually the ones who set the employment benefits for their own employees you know to have a problem with your reading  reproduced page twenty seven of the review would like it to say includes a plan maintained by an organization controlled by with the church but this  sion seems to be giving authority to principal purpose organizations and not to and it is controlled by association right well you're absolutely right except for the point about how i would like to read because we like the way it reads now what this does is it and there's no question that our reading gives independent meaning to principle pork purposes organization we can see that an absolute for requirement is that the plan must be maintained by an organization whether x journal internal that has its principal purpose the administration or funding of a plan but justice ginsburg the definition of a principle purpose organization includes a plan for any employee of a church and employee of a church is defined expressly in c two to mean any employee not of a church namely any church affiliated tax exempt organization so whether it's a pension board that's either sitting in the hospital or religious charity or it's a pension board that externally incorporated congress made sure that the maintaining organization the one with control over the funds and the administration itself has to be religiously affiliated and this is a tricky question but is this a question that was decided by the courts of appeals and is the question that we agreed to review no no so on remain and they have an argument assuming we win and that there's no formal requirement that the church establish the plan that maintaining organization in this case these retirement committees don't qualify but i do think it's quite important to understand congress was drafting this maintaining by a p p o or principle purpose organization it was merely defining exactly what before and after one nine hundred eighty and regardless of the church plan context with every employment pension plan and america looks like they're being maintained by either a separate retirement committee or a separately incorporated retirement committee now the other what i think justice alito they were trying to say it's anomalous that a plan congress and trusted a pension board to have control over all the administration in the funding but didn't allow it to establish the plan which is absurd given the historical context that pension boards were both establishing and maintaining the other thing that's anomalous about their their proposal is it leaves out in the cold the nuns and it assumes that congress rebuffed every religious denomination in america who complain to congress about how the i r s had been interpret provision and so what the i r s had done in one thousand nine hundred seven is it looked at a it was attempting to define what constitutes a church and the i r s ruled that because nuns were not cut two orders of catholic nuns were not the church when they were caring for the sick their hospital plan could not be covered misplay putting aside that purpose do you think congress had in mind a corporations that a sensually like every other corporation except their not for profit i mean these hospital some of them like dignity the catholic church has disavowed any formal affiliation with the well let me just sorry to have that if that you think that i don't understand the nuns but you're talking now about an extreme well the nuns established dignity in a priest established st peter's our bishop rather so but let me just get back to the planet institution that's not religious enough was not what the stablish meant but see for requires any church plan that's that's being maintained by these affiliated organizations to have common bonds and common religious bonds and convictions question they're not doing anything different than any other hospital well that you know or care since here they are competing they're the fifth largest health care provider in the nation they have sixty thousand assume some sort of corporate entity but let me get to the bottom line here if you read paul comments brief filed by the catholic church itself and the brief filed by the united church of christ in the evangelical lutheran church of america and the seventh day adventists that's four churches your decision applies to begin small medium extra religious non religious so whatever you think of dignity and i have no doubt that it's it's both it has both catholic bonds and catholic affiliations but there's nothing about the size of this we know congress had in mind a hospital plan the word hospital appears on every page of the legislative history is what i'd like to get to your question about the point you raised early on about the significance of the interpretation of the i r s the pension benefit  d and who was the other one ira prominent labor i r s pension benefit what are the limits of that proposition i mean i don't quite understand you're saying because these three government agencies interpreted the statute one way i think we have to go back and look at the statute ourselves of course but i mean skidmore's still a decision and it says what you said but it says anything you find persuasive but the i r s why should it be persuasive you want it i think prompted the amendment by trying to say what a church was congress responded not by telling the i r s what the church was or that the nuns were the church but by making that question irrelevant the i r s objected and immediately after the law was pas started reversed course on the very non planet issue here but let me get to the reason about skidmore with this case is about just two of these cases mr chief justice the respondent seek eleven billion i am not kidding eleven billion per year that sixty six billion dollars in two cases if arista six year statute of limitations applies the risk that the other side could recover even any fraction of that amount is reason enough for you to make sure that the i r s this decision is somehow a reasonable that d without getting into the legislative history which i found totally on informative is there why is it that we give so much weight to these letters when there was no notice and comment regulation and tell me a little bit  faith in america complained to congress congress introduced the bills in response to the religious community and immediately after and the pension rights center that's an amicus was testifying it's just it's silly to think that they didn't know how to use the internet at least by whatever the internet came around and couldn't figure out or go to the library and didn't couldn't read a private letter ruling but i think the significance is it's not just even the retroactive penalties countless plans have been structured around the i r s the department of labor and the piccies view and if you are firm just for all the existing plans that were not established you're unleashing a torrent of undesirable unintended consequences not just for the hostages question is what can you point to to tell us that the i r s letters were an important part of the motivation for congress to make this change ok so it was the i r s is ruling under for the nine hundred seventy seven catholic nun plan and twenty i think twenty letters and the church alliance representing over twenty seven denominations fifty million people complained bitterly to congress and the entire i know you don't want to look at legislative history but every single thing is about how hospitals and church agencies are part of an essential to the church and the only way justice kennedy to interpret that is that they were talking about the irises definition that because nuns were not performing priestly functions they want the church and i just think so the i r s was at the table the i r s is objecting the i r s goes home and starts immediately reversing course and you have the fact that the i mean we've talked about the i r s the other side concedes that another major purpose was to put congregational religions on parity with hierarchical congregations and we know that the nine hundred seventy four act excluded these pension board established and maintained plans and under respondents interpretations these plans too are left out in the cold we know is the one thousand nine hundred these protestant pension boards were not only maintaining plans they established but plans that their church agencies had established i could reserve the rest of my time  provision that congress would draft if it were doing the whole thing in one fell swoop but it's important to understand that the text of the current provision is the combination of things that were done in one nine hundred seventy four and things that were done in one nine hundred eighty congress adopted the original church plan provision presumably that had in mind particular plans that were established and maintained by churches and it covered those and pretty quickly problems came to light other types of plans were found not to be covered by the administrative agency that congress evidently believes should be covered and so when congress amended the provision in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight chose to work within the existing framework we're not quite sure why but at least one plausible explanation would be there were some church plans that had been found to be covered under the old established and maintained by a church language congress may have wanted to avoid any possible inference that those plans were no longer covered and so it retained the original language but  fined it to include something else and when congress passed the provision that this plot was discussing earlier see one that refers to a plan established and maintained for its employee use includes a plan maintained by a principle purpose organization i think it's it's helpful to recognize that there are two different sorts of definitional provisions that congress sometimes and acts sometimes when congress enacts a definition it's trying to clarify what the defined term really means and when congress acts in that way we tend to strain to read the definition in a way that makes it consistent with ordinary understandings of the defined term but sometimes congress will enact a provision that says something like that for purposes of the staff the term state includes the district of columbia and puerto rico when congress does that it's not trying to explain what state really means it's simply using a shorthand formulation to say for purposes of the statute we want d c in puerto rico to be treated the same way that the fifty states would be treated and that's really what congress was doing in the one nine hundred eighty amendment when it defined the term plan established and maintained by a church to include plans that satisfied the prerequisites in the amendment it was not saying this is what a plan a stablished and maintained by a church really is it was saying for purposes of the extent of the church plan exemption we want these to be treated the same  the respondents hypotheticals where they offer hypothetical statutes that are very similar in structure to this one and it's pretty clear that you would read you know the ones about disabled veterans and the one about the two presidential criteria and it's pretty clear that you would read those sentences the away rather than your way in other words as just going to one of the criteria and i'm wondering why you think that's true that they can come up with these hypotheticals that so clearly should be interpreted their way rather than your way i guess i would say about the hypothetical that is used most often most often person disabled in a veteran includes such that courts would assume i believe that congress should simply made a sort of scrivener's error that congress had used language sloppily part part of that has to do with the instinct that i deluded to earlier that is we would tend to regard a provision light that as one in which congress was really trying to explain what the term person who is disabled and a veteran means and so we would strain to read the definition in a way that made it consistent if congress passed a statute that said something like person who is disabled and a veteran shell include any federal employee he with thirty years or more of service at that point we don't understand congress is just abandoned the effort to explain what person who is disabled in a veteran actually means it has decided for whatever reason that it wants employee use with a new federal employees with unusually long service to get the same benefits as a disabled veteran would get under a particular statute and as you shorthand to to accomplish that i would think that the way that hypothetical works it's sort of we're setting these two criteria you have to be a veteran and you have to be disabled and then we're going to say there's a special case of veterans we also mean to include national guard folks and that's not disqualifying the fact that it's a national guard folks but the two criteria are still the two criteria or we're suggesting is that it's not disqualifying that you're a national guard and you could read this language similarly it's not disqualifying that it's maintained by a different kind of organization i guess i all i would concede based on these hypotheticals is that sometimes a provision that is structured in this way will give rise to the natural inference that congress wanted to do something other than simply i deem a particular thing to fall within the whole defined term and that it had in mind a part but i think in construing this provision it may be helpful to look at page twenty four of the government's brief which explains which kind of clarify something that most black was referring to earlier that that this on page twenty four of the  government's brief we lay out the way in which this amendment changed from the time it was first introduced in one nine hundred seventy nine to when it was an act in one nine hundred eighty and as the questioning in the first part of the argument explained the original introduced provision said a plan established and maintained by a church shell include a plan a stablished and maintained by the principal purpose organization and so though the words established and appeared to places in that introduce but maintained by a principle purpose organization that would be the the hypothetical would be like this case where this case would be like the hypothetical if the requirement that the plan be established by the church was absolutely critical as the requirement that the the individual have a disability is absolutely critical in the hypothetical which gets to the question of what is the significance in practical terms of a plans being a stablished by a church now mr feldman says that an entity that establishes a plan is financially responsible for paying benefits under the plan if the plan is on the able to do that with it's assets but you say that's not correct is that right that's not correct i mean in the typical arista case you will have a play on a stablished and maintained by a single employer and that employer will be responsible for making good on the problem as and and that employer may be a defendant  promises are breached but that doesn't mean that the entity that established is the plan qua establish or is always going to be on the hook if in particular i'm on the run it's sometimes on the hook if the establish or maintains ongoing responsibility but there's first there's no reason to think even if you applied a risk of standards that a church that established a plan but then left the administration of the plan entirely in the hands of somebody else could be held liable under arrest a second the whole point of the church plan exemption is that plans that qualify will not be regulated under a recess at all they will be regulated under state law so if the church in order to satisfy this requirement a stablish the plan and then left its maintenance to somebody else whether the church would have any ongoing liability would depend on state laws that might vary around the country so if i'd say can you tell me what provision of a recess i'll ask mr feldman the same thing if i ha a chance what provision of a recess explains which and to d if any is responsible for paying benefits if for example a defined benefit plan is unable to do that with be and so the courts have devised tests and approaches to determine in particular cases who the proper defendant is and to some extent that will depend upon the way the plan itself is constructed that is the plan may say that the responsibility for doing certain things is that of the employer for doing other things that may be that of the insurer and so the proper defendant may determine on where responsibility is allocated under the terms of the plan and but so i agree that one big difference between this case and the hypotheticals is the hypothetical isn't constructed in a way that suggests disability has to be crucial to entitle mint to benefits whereas here there's no reason to think that congress in one nine hundred eighty regarded churches stablish meant as crucial to the exemption and the point i was trying to make about who is going to make about it i guess that's the question and the structure is the same i guess the point i was going to make about if i if i could finish this church about the way in which the statue changed from introduction to final passage is that everyone agrees that congress could have more clearly achieve the objective that respondent says they were trying to achieve if it had said a pla maintained by a church includes a plan maintained by a principle purpose organization and so the idea seems to be congress was just a little bit careless in leaving in a stablished unmaintained at the beginning that seems particularly implausible given the care they took to knock out the second iteration of a stablished and in the same provision thank you counsel what do what i go to to break the time i think if you look at what congress was trying this is what i would say if you accept their view what you end up with is a statute that doesn't fit what congress enacted at all and creates a that are impossible to explain and for those reasons at least as well as the fact that congress was very jealous about creating exemptions to a risk a risk covers every private employer every nonprofit every hospital in the country and there's only one catterick set up there's only one category excluded and that's church plans and congress actually defined church plans carefully they wanted a close tie between the church and the plan because their purpose was they didn't want to go involved in get involved in church affairs and so they said church plan has to be established and established and maintained by a church it needs to fit both criteria because we want if there's church involvement here we w hands off if there's no church involvement though there's no reason why these hospitals like any other hospital in the country and like many other for every other firm in the country shouldn't have to provide the employees with a pension insurance to protect them against the statute actually doesn't say anything about the principal purpose and today so there's three different kinds of things we're talking about here their churches themselves there's principal purpose organizations which are organizations that are in the business of just giving i mean that the church agency employees right and the church it what it said was yes it's it was facing a problem in one nine hundred eighty which was the original statute said if you're a church you can cover not only your own employees but you can also cover the employees of your church agencies that what the original statute said but only until one thousand nine hundred two and that is what everybody was objecting to and that's why people were people were objecting to the withdrawal of that sunset provision that was going to happen in one nine hundred eighty two and the reason why they were talking about agencies are very closely related to churches that was not a was it was not to say their view is that congress wanted to allow fish and they wanted these agencies to split up these plants to split apart and the agency to have their own plan and the church to have their own plan and that's what they wanted but it's exactly the opposite they wanted to allow churches to continue as they had been to provide to have a plan that would cover both the church's employees and the agency's employees and they were they were interested in continued fusion they weren't interested in fission and actually there's nobody anywhere who talked about this at it who said well what we really need is to allow another whole class of private entities to establish their own plants so in the provision that you are referred to when they say well that the employees of the church associated agency will be deemed to be employees of the churches congress passed that provision to solve exactly the one nine hundred eighty two problem ok a church plan has to be established and maintained by the church and says in a which was left unchanged established and maintained by a church for it hundreds of hospitals and other businesses they're going to be able to just deprive their employees of at risk what is if you look at it but it led to hundreds of letters from the i r s is that an exaggeration or is that aren't there hundreds of i r s letters proving that's true and a video that the mother of the mall which was the general council member and up from my eighty two eighty three said it says this may not be relied upon or cited as precedent and the statute that authorized all these private let which were all done on an x party basis and without the opportunity but nevertheless it shows that an entity that had one of these plans that where there was some doubt was proceeding in good faith with the insured with the assurance  s that what they were doing was lawful and that entitle them to exactly what it was supposed the government had that this may not be relied upon language because it didn't want to be bound to this and that's standard language in a private letter ruling yes ok when this goes on and on quite without reference to the legislative history of the which senator said what which i think is helpful we do know that the climate the culture of the economic problem after thirty years was that many of yarn i don't think that that's right so these cases are about primarily overwhelmingly forward looking at moody's they're about bringing these plans into accord with the risk to getting insurance for these plans so that their employees can be sure that they get their benefits from this best to get witness black in correct when she said that the complaint seek billions of dollars in penalties right the complaint we don't know all the facts of this case but i answer to my question yes they well they they don't actually know i don't believe they name a dollar figure for the penalty well they if you figured out the penalties would they be billions of the no one has ever although how can you say that this is primarily about forward looking for a cause i think that everybody knows admits in this case want everybody admits the statute the authority to issue penalties if penalties in the district court's discretion and the nobody has ever no court has ever i don't think issues had a real penalty close to that and this court has repeatedly emphasize actually i understand that but i may use add that this is primarily don't worry about the penalties this is primarily about forward looking things and you have the complaints ask for the penalties what are you willing on behalf of your clients to disavow any requests for penalties no i'm not i mean how can you say that it's primarily about forward looking because i can say that because we don't know the facts of this case i'm willing to say that if all the facts suggested that they acted in good faith throughout and just made a mistake and they could have been expected to do anything else that i i would think they would be a well they have that whatever that's not there whatever reliance was reasonable based on these hundreds of letters that's one thing about relying on the literal meaning of the central statutory provision yes and i think that the literal meaning of that as all three courts of appeals unanimously agreed the literal meaning of that was this is not a state a stand alone statute that says you know there are statutes in the u s code that say that don't define a term and then they say but a felony includes something or other ok they don't define felony they just have felony include something or other that's one kind of statute and then courts are supposed to figure out what else a felony literal language of c one and you are now talking about everything else not literal language of c one says a plan established and maintained by a church includes a plan that is maintained by a principle purpose organization  as simple as that read literally it is not required that it be established by a church or you have other arguments but i just you're on our expect fully disagree the court if this court has said one thing more often than anything else in the context of statutory interpretation it's that you have to read things in context and you have to read statutes as a whole and this see one has language the ties it directly back to a which congress said in one thousand nine hundred we are retaining a the way it is and i think you have to read them both together if you read them both together what you say is the basic form is whether it's the example of the disabled veterans the president or the examples that they gave in the reply brief the basic form of this is if you have a statute that says here's a rule that applies to a and b and then it says amby includes a particular kind of b which is what this says right establish and maintain includes a particular kind of maintenance then that is naturally take by one of these organizations and right so the other way that's in the question is under your interpretation stablished and have no have no function i actually don't think that's quite right they could have worded this other they certainly could have worded this statute many other ways to accomplish respondents position petitions position position but this is the point of repeating that language was directly to talk it was one way to directly tie it back into it and say ok now we're talking about these things we're one include a particular kind of b that is one thing to note is it's not beat it doesn't say i mean in particular it petitioners have no answer for this at all why congress wanted to have  require them to have a principal purpose organisation at all churches don't have to have that and why did congress trust them to establish their own plans and then say but we actually you can establish your plans dignity hospital but you don't have to maintain the plan you're so you can't maintain we are prohibiting you from maintaining your plan you have to go to a principal an agency that's principally involved in dealing with employee benefits that otherwise satisfies the requirements and you have to have them maintain it from your and there's an active what is the practical significance of requiring that the excuse me plans be established by the church i think the practical significance is congress is purpose here and i don't think this is in dispute and there's no other purpose it's been suggested it was hands off the church or if church is involved with the plan we don't we don't we want to have that the give them the freedom to be outside of our risk but there's no church involved when there's no church involved as there is in this case the church has well but you know the rest a problem with that and the the church is involved to the extent the last says that the principal purpose is agency is maintaining that fun for people who are defined to be church employees but there you can see the church is not involved in that suit in the situation before you know actually i think you can call what i'm saying is the church itself these employees who are so defined are actually employees of the the church has an agency whose mission is to you know feed the hungry close in a good all of that and that iris was saying well that's not a church it's got nothing to do with it and now it's changed in those those individuals who are engaged in that social mission are treated as members of the church agency they are treated that way so that the charge agents they are there doing that so that the church can include them in its plan if they want it and that if the church wants to do that that's eight tell me how your reading of the statute includes the organizations that were clamoring and for whom the i r s had said were covered by this provision the pension coverage how does your reading take care of those two situations facing congress i think it actually perfectly matches with those two situations the c two three provisions as i said they allowed churches to continue if they want to cover church agencies eliminated the one thousand nine hundred two cut off that people were concerned about the c one provision said that was not a provision about letson drastically expand the types of entities that are and by millions of employees the type of employees who don't have reciprocal action this was what representative carnival termed a chemical but i would have thought that the one thing that seems most clear from a pretty murky legislative history is the church pension boards were supposed to be included in this and the church pension boards some of them were established their plans were established by the church some of them not so you would be taking out some of these church pension boards that i thought were th of quintessential group that this was designed to include i really disagree with the premise of that if you look back you know no cause there is nothing in the legislative history that said there anybody there said this for correctly you know there's a few stray references in the letters from pension boards saying yeah we established a plan but we actually go over each of the ones in our brief and these are the ones that they cite and they're actually congress had no if that was not the way they operate and that it's actually not the way they operate now the way they operate is a these are for congregation churches primarily and in a congregational type of set up you have an assembly or synod of the church itself and this is just an assembly of all the local churches and they they will establish the plans but if they don't have the one to listen to what does it mean to establish a plan and that listing is important  definite benefits over to in under to some employees reasonably well defined that's what it means if you don't make that commitment if you say for the church that we want somebody else to have a plan and laid out what the terms would be actually the church would definitely look around page fifty six a of the sort petition appendix in the dignity case the district court said well who established this plan of dignity the hospital they passed a corporate resolution and adopted a summary the appropriate corporate officers adopted a summary plan description and with a establish the plan and that committed dignity to doing certain things and it wasn't somebody else who did it and that's usually what that inquiry is you need some kind of commitment now congre that kind of commitment was made by a church congress said we want hands off and they had good reasons for doing it it's very much like in the tax code there's numerous other places where you have to distinguish between churches and church agencies in section twenty six c seventy six eleven gives churches quite extraordinary protection against audits against the circumstances under which they can be audited the types of things that can be looked at and the rights they have during the audit applies only to churches and not to agencies and the principle was the same principle here is we don't want the government looking into the books and records of churches and i think that will end the situation where the church establishes the plan and then turns over the maintenance on a plan to principle purpose organization the audits would be the books of the principal purpose organization there wouldn't be very much to look for in the records of the church so if that's the if that was the purpose of it i don't see what the establishment require i would think that it's more than just looking at the books and records at a particular time there can it when the church is establishing a plan it's making some kind of commitment of what kind of benefits who's going to get and when that's what it means to establish a  plan and how it's going to be funded and what you say might work where do i look to find that and where do i look to find the provision that says what you say which is that the entity that establishments plan is financially responsible that the financial risk is financially liability but i mean the the person parties establishing plans can't but under if it's not an oversupply and they probably can have provisions if they were only going to give you what some of the money that's in the plan where's the credit they still have to make a commitment and that would be governed recent i think it's i can't cite it to you right now the number but it's the provision that says you have to carry out the terms of a plan and what about mr stewart suggested the opposite no and he i don't think so i think he said he said the employees can sue  resupply and you can sue under five o two for whatever the benefits are that you're you've been promised but sue the entity establishing it or the person or the entity maintaining the plan you could easy for frequently they're the same but if they're different in certainly in this case  right in this case i think they are actually when you're talking about refund the principal purpose agency is the one but the principle is the one right now and the principal purpose agency in these cases is a come in turn all committee of of  we believe that it can't and in fact there would be no reason at all for congress to have we a part according to my friend congress wanted to be sure that whoever is maintaining the plan is somebody who's associated with the church but there was no reason to talk about principal purpose employee benefit organizations that are primarily involved in employee benefits if that's what you wanted to accomplish the own toe this makes sense if you look at it as something that congregational denominations were doing as of one nine hundred eighty which is they found it convenient to have the maintenance of the plan done by a organization that was an employee benefits organization and nobody objected to that they said that's fine mr hopper and an object that nobody did that's fine if you want if that's a convenient way they would talk about how to run a plan not opening up the plan to a broad range and not opening up the exemption to a broad range of plans and probably millions of employees and just back one how many many many employees did come in under the i r s interpretation for thirty years that wouldn't have come in at the i r s followed yours if you know about i just rough it i would assume all of them you know i mean i'd like to get a rough idea of what your top we're talking about because your argument practically depends on if we keep following the i r s interpretation of that numbers of plans that come in that wouldn't otherwise they followed it for thirty years i'd like to get a rough and idea of how many of come in because they did except your interpretation how many employees are are exempt that would have otherwise been right they say that there are a million employees that have been in these plans actually there's probably millions or more employees in the future once this court reaches a decision that why why wouldn't they be kept out by the principle purpose definition unless they really are the little sisters of the poor they wouldn't be kept out any more than petitioners in this case would be i mean it would be the soul that maybe but there's an issue as to whether petitioners in this case which ones come in and which ones don't right but i think really the point is that there's are lots or if you don't know ok so so the idea i wanted to get a rough idea of the expose of the practical extent of the to interpret and the little sisters of the poor maintain it on your definition are they in or out they're out be the last third in it is established by a municipality and it goes broke and the little sisters of the poor say we'll run the hospital in or out affiliated with the church you know really affiliated with the church they do have an out of if they really are part of the church i would add one other thing if they really are the church and there we really are as part of the church and they can qualify as a church that's fine they can this line between churches and church agencies is one that gets drawn throughout the law gets drawn and seven or eight provisions of the us code not the whole purpose was to avoid that inquiry or that was the mistake that the iris made is that it was saying these church church agencies would not have been able to be in a plan no matter who did what for anything and what they wanted to do something about that what was the tenor of the hundreds and hundreds of letters that congress received about what the iris and what did they understand the iris to tell you if you look at the twenty page i think ten thousand and fifty four or so of the congressional record i don't remember the volume number but it's cited by petitioners and by us there are twenty letters that senator put in the record i looked at them of those six of them use the term internal revenue service but the internal revenue service at that time was promulgating regulations this is not about the little sisters of the poor and none of them mentioned that in fact there's no mention of the little sister of or the sisters who had the plan in new jersey there's no mention of that at all are you saying that the only purpose of the amendment was to avoid the sunset provision i think there were two purposes with what you  so there that avoiding the sunset provision was not the only purpose that that was what you just said a couple minutes ago that we're ok i didn't mean to say that what i meant to say is the purpose of the c two and c three provisions which was completely accomplish was to get rid of the sunset every time we want to do something else right and that's what c y s and the other thing they want to do was what representative carnival called a technical problem which is they wanted to enable churches congregational church is to maintain plans in a different way than they had been made to maintain plans through this separate agency because that was the way they found it most convenient to do and that actually explains this language of why they're talking in the first place about principal purpose agencies and why that doesn't apply to the churches can establish and maintain a plan and that's fine so why do you think i mean i have read all your arguments about why the i r s letters are not entitle to deference but i come at it from a different point which is it wasn't part of these private organizations they just organizations but the i r s to who was lobbying congress to express itself on this issue and take care of what the i r s knew was a problem for all these people and then all of a sudden almost immediately after evidence that the agency believed that the answer was different than you're promoting right now i think you know the agency did believe the answer was different that it's in the letters there's no reasoning actually in those letters at all and insofar as  they they did interpret it the way they did i wouldn't deny that they did that but there is they give no reason for doing that these were x letters every one of them up until the last couple of years was done on x party basis the competitors had no chance to say this is what we think the employees had no chance to say this is what we think they didn't analyze the importance of a risk for visions they didn't analyze what would inevitably did happen which is there are six or seven church plans already that have failed and left the employees with nothing that had they been covered by arista they would have had pvc insurance the iris didn't take any of that into account at all and you know they were just wrong in one thousand nine hundred two and in fact it's hard to say and it's clear one part that they're wrong that we talk  about their brief but it's hard to see what other reasoning they have about why they didn't even consider the practical consequences of this they didn't consider the history of it they didn't consider the degree relationships between the a and the c one provision they just didn't consider what any of the particular words of the statute meant they really didn't do any of that i would like to make one other point on on on reliance which is you know this is about bringing these plants into compliance with a risk that shouldn't be a hard thing to do and a district court should be able to do it giving them whatever period of time is reasonable that's the overwhelming thing that's at issue here and in fact if as they say they haven't departed from a risk that much which we don't agree we believe the need to be particularly easy to bring them into play compliance with the result the only two things that are backward looking at all are the civil damages which i mention and the fact that you may have to adjust some testing schedules between three and five years which is likely to be a minor problem thank you council two minutes so i'm just going to start with the funding issue the one thing that's about c is that the church does not have to fund c one plans because the statute explicitly allows them maintaining organization to fund it and see one moves maintenance outside the church which means the church are absolutely off the hook they also you know that they raise the dignity plan sponsoring congregations did establish those plans and the other side argues the sponsoring congregations are not the church and i guess that's because they're not priest the other thing i would ask you to read is the brief by the united church of christ in the evangelical lutheran church of america they explain that the centralization that an establishment requirement would impose is anathema to their religious beliefs and it's the same reason the maintenance is it's a continuum establishment and maintenance establishment turns on day one and then they  time immemorial their being the other side concede you can maintain a but the notion that there is some umbrella church for the jews and the protestants is just it's fantastical that could possibly establish these plans the other thing i wanted to mention the other side keeps talking about these closely tied joint plans but the only other thing we know that's polluted about sea is that exempt plan can cover every single employee this country for a religious nonprofit institution and not a single church employee needs to be in that plan the other side is asking you to engage in a counterintuitive kind of weird thing that a church would set the dental plans and the vesting requirements for employees of a affiliated organization especially in a place like the jewish and protestant religion and that just is not credible and finally on the anomalies i mean they have the anomal they want to divorce the establishment from the maintenance they have the anomaly that the nuns are left out in the cold they have the anomaly of the y m c a i see my time is up i don't want to know that the y m c a is the only you know religious organization america that