your argument next think a seventeen thirteen zero seven zero do ski versus mccarthy in full force mr geyser thank you mr chief justice and may please the court non judicial foreclosures are covered under the fair debt collection practices act as a direct or indirect attempt to collect a consumer's debt is a direct attempt because a proof foreclosure notices are indistinguishable from traditional dunning letters it is an indirect attempt because of foreclosure process is designed by law to automatically sell the consumer's house to obtain payment on the consumer's debt these conclusions follow directly from the x plain text structure purpose and history responded can only resist these conclusions by rewriting the statutory tax creating a huge loophole in the acts scope and eliminating the safeguards that congress designed to protect consumers from debt collector mistakes and abuse which occur all too often in the foreclosure context we think that the easiest way to resolve this case is to focus directly on the print foreclosure notices those notices are quintessential at the c p a communications they just so happened to arise in the foreclosure context they state that there is a default on the debt they state the amount of the debt owed they say to whom the debt is owed and critically they state the consequence of failing to satisfy that debt that message is unequivocal to any consumer who receives it i think you have a you have a pretty good argument if we look at least you've got a you've got a reasonable argument under that provision but the two provisions seem to me to create a lot of problems for your position are fifteen usas fifteen u s c sixteen in a six which creates a special definition a debt collector for a purpose that's not relevant here and that refers to any business the principal purpose of which is the enforcement of security interests so if a a business it's whose purse principle purposes this is in force with no security interests fell within the prior definition the purpose definition there wouldn't be a reason for for that provision i think you've got a tough time explaining that away and you're your answer is that we're first in repose activities but then there's another provision that talks about what looks like repo activities and a lot more specific language sixty ninety two f six which talks about dispossession them to say so what's your answer to that well your honor i think these provisions actually reinforce our reading of the act what congress did is it started with the main definition for dec collector and then it proceeded and it expanded that definition if you look at the language is says this term also includes that those are words of expansion they're collecting people who otherwise don't fall within the main definition so we talk about traditional repack to me we're talking about the type of person who isn't forcing security interests without directly or indirectly selecting it that it's only expanding it for purposes of sixteen ninety two after six exactly your honor but our point is that it's the that means that it's something less than that other than sixteen ninety to have sex at least that's the most natural or a natural way to rebuild we fully agree our point is that for someone who isn't forcing a security interest but not also directly or indirectly collecting a debt those people are only said because that one subsection and it's very clear what congress had in mind precisely because of sixty nine hundred two f six it talks about this possessing or disabling property that's talking about taking possession of property it's not talking about demanding payment it doesn't talk about selling assets to to liquidate someone's debt it's specifically focused on exactly the kind of activity that congress would have had in mind for somebody says engaging in a non judicial for foreclosure is enforcing your security interest and if they didn't so they appear to fall within about provision and if congress didn't want them to fall with their operation and only wanted to capture the repro guys why would we use the more specific language that include anyone forcing a security interest and then it would have said notwithstanding that exclusion it does apply for purposes of this one subsection that's exactly what congress did in the middle sentence the sandwiched between the the main a definition the additional one interest in real property securing a consumer's debt that's a poor closure action that's the only way to read that language and congress described it as a legal action on a debt against the consumer that provision only applies to someone who fits within the definition of a deck collector under the main definition so it doesn't make any sense to read that section it doesn't make any sense read that section as limited to security enforcers when it only applies to people who might and for security interests but they're also collecting debts but again we think if you look just to the initial the first part of the section it talks about of the main definition of a debt collector and if you read the security in force mint provision to exclude people who otherwise qualified directly within that mean definition you're setting up these two sentences to conflict with each other mr jones we can i may be missing something here so a help as i understand it use you think that first sentence in a six is the main one and captures most collectors but for some reason it doesn't capture the the repo man who in the dead of night goes and just grabs my car and for that we need the last right that's right i'm following you so far great but then when i go to over to f six which further illuminates that last sentence and talks about who's covered who talks about the fellow who takes the dead of night repo man you're talking about we're threatens to take a security interest so there's that fellow he's not just taken the stuff in the middle of the night he's he's threatening to do it he's talking to me and i would have thought that fellow would have been captured by you know reading the first sentence of of a six so that's rather convoluted and roundabout but help me out what why doesn't that  without collecting a debt that those are the people who typically are not communicating with the debtor and there's certainly a large portion of report activity or people who are changing locks on doors who want nothing to do with the debtor at all they hope to never see them the entire point is to show up in the dead of night take their car and return it to the creditor now i think what's critical about f six again it does not talk about demanding payment it doesn't talk about liquidating assets and so if you think of the type of activity it's covering it's not covering people who fall within the main definite many elegant words there but what we do about the word threatening that was my question well again two ways to handle it one is that they may not be threatening to collect a debt they may not be demanding payment they may not be car when in fact they don't intend to take it at that at that time because they want to get paid they want to tow the car back to the creditor and they're hoping to keep it there so they can take it in time but again i think the most common application of the security and force or definition will typically involve people who aren't communicating with the debtor and remember f six also applies to someone who qualifies under the main definition it applies to both security and forcers and to people who are full fledged debt collectors and so congress point that's the point i think i mean let's call it part one and part two for one so the debt collectors can't borrow so and so and then hear all the things they can't do and that's a lot of people and then we have part t and part two says the mortgage people are debt collectors for purposes of f six and f six doesn't have all of them it just has a few pretty bad so and so why would congress have put in f six part to be sure that these people who are not full fledged debt collectors have to do at least f six ok absolutely but right now if we have a person who fits within the definition of part t and that would seem to argue against his fitting into the definition of part one absolutely not your honor because you can have someone who does both take take a repos man who shows up but instead of doing what they actually do which is they wait for the consumer to leave and then they agent in both because they're sending notices that are actually absolutely indistinguishable from classic debt collection activity they're demanding payment on the debt and if you don't pay them by the in colorado in two thousand and seventeen about eleven percent of people did in fact pay in response to these notices are carried out while other question of course is what do you want to say in respect to thank you colorado has a pretty good in many respects stricter law than there is here and and that protects the consumers more and yet i guess if we accept would you say we'd have to say that the colorado law is illegal absolutely not your hero because one of the reasons that would be illegal is who says you can't communicate with a third person you couldn't tell the trustee about he supposed to responding and the government they could cobble together at best three or maybe four possible conflicts and when you actually dig into the weeds of those conflicts or not conflicts at all they're very easy to accommodate and if you want to walk through them if you look at the notice on sixty nine conflicts the you can first obtain advance consent from the consumer to provide all necessary consents in the event of a foreclosure and if the consumer decides not to follow through the creditor can send the notice the f t c pay does not apply to creditors we know this from hanson it only applies to professional debt collectors and there's absolutely nothing in the colorado scheme that says that a foreclosure has to be run by a professional deck liked or the consumer can the creditor can take the notice publish it themselves and there's absolutely no problem mr geyser and i find this a difficult question in going back to something that justice alito said the reason i find it a difficult question is it seems to me that judicial foreclosures  nontraditional closures fall within both they these people are debt collectors under the language of the statute and these people are in force and security interest under the land the statute but that can't be right because the grammar of the statute suggests that we now have to kick them out of one or the other all right and so the question is which do we kick them out of do we say notwithstanding that they look like that collectors we're not going to treat them like debt collectors or do we say that notwith standing that they enforce security interests we're going to pretend that they don't so when i think about it that way i kind of think well i don't know foreclosures are parodic mattick enforcement of security interests there's nothing that gets more enforcing the security interests than for close in on a mortgage so kicking them out of that one seems a little bit more odd than kicking them out of a very broad definition of debt collection as well as a few points your honor first is i don't think you have to kick them out of the additional definitions they fall in the main definition if congress had said if braden that as an exclusion instead of an addition they're trying to capture more people then i think that that point would have more force even if congress had said for purpose s of subsection six ninety two f six only but they didn't say that and again this is a this is a definitional section that's capturing people you start at the beginning you're seeing is this person covered if they don't fall within any cause they're not covered and so if you fall within the first cause you're covered if you happen to also do something that qualifies you under a different sentence that is not framed in exclusionary terms then that's fine but you still qualify under the main definition and again when congress wanted to exclude people they did it expressly and we know exactly how they did it because it follows the additional definition your point there though depends right on reading that when we're just referring to the repo garri right we have to we fully can see that we need to identify some situation so then when you go back to it seems odd to think that that's just limited to the repo situation for understand the interaction of the two provisions correctly well again the additional definition will cover it who aren't just repossessing cars it can also include someone who is separately collecting debts because again you can fit under both under both sentences there is nothing about the statute that says if you fall within an additional category that you're excluded from the main category and congress again they know how to write a statute that does that this is statutory overlap you see it all the time in the us and let me ask you this about the repo situation suppose the repo guy is out there or ira getting into a car and the owner of the car sees him out the window and runs out with a gun and says what are you doing on the repo guy says well you didn't pay you're in default on your payments on taking your car to see it is he had to debt collector because he's now told the car owner that the about the debt in that scenario i don't think so because he's not leveraging the security interest it would be different if he said if you want to pay now i'll get out of the car and go away but if he says foreclosure situation where the homeowner is simply notified that the house that the mortgage is being foreclosed i think i think there's a stark difference whether you honor that will the differen they're not just saying we're going to foreclose on your house no matter what you do they're saying this is the amount you owe this is a consequence if you don't pay it by this date we've been instructed to take away your home adding an express statement at the end of that that says will you please pay now is absolutely superfluous to any ordinary normal person who receives that letter they understand exactly what it's saying saying pay us money it be more like the repo agent who says i'm going to repossess the car unless you pay the money now and then that person would be a de clocked or but someone who just says that we're we're going to take the car no matter what that's that's leagues away because they're not leveraging the security interests and again if you look to the structure of the act it's very hard to understand how foreclosure activity does not fall within the main definition when there is a special section sixty nine to the talks directly about foreclosures i have another question about your report man example you say we need that last sentence to capture him than a six but why we be captured by the first sentence in a six two why isn't repo man a classic debt collector under any definition even the broader the very broad ones you proffer for a six were son's first i don't think that's the most natural reading of it because you're focusing specifically on what each person in the process is doing when the repo man again when he goes and takes a car in the middle of the night and returns it to the creditor he is the principal purpose of his business using interstate commerce to collect the debt well whatever whatever th says the the principal purpose is to enforce the security interests when the repo man is done and he delivers the card to the creditors lot he's not a team payment on the debt and that's even under response definition it's why don't you lose them why is that the it's the repo man the repo man does not fall within the main definition and again i'm not saying that foreclosure agents because foreclosure agents aren't engaged strictly in repo activity again they're sending notices they're trying to induce payment i'm talking about the repo man just a report first of all first question why doesn't it fall within the first sentence of and second if he doesn't and what why isn't he exactly like the foreclosure expert well that their conduct is completely different which is also why they don't fall within the first sentence of a if all they're doing is enforcing the security interest they take the property and they bring it back to the creditor but the result of that is to liquidate the debt and i thought that your principal argument as to nontraditional foreclosures was that we should look to the real economic effect of this which is to liquidate the debt and just like a nontraditional discotheque foreclosure liquidates a debt so to this repossession of the collateral do the exact same thing that it eventually might just as kagan but it doesn't when the repo man's job is over and then this is a really critical point man brings the car back to the creditor they have not yet sold the car it's an up to the creditor to directly or indirectly this is the when you get to the repo man you're indulging in all of these sort of hyper technical distinctions the same kind that you criticize mr sherman jim for indulging in when it comes to nontraditional foreclosures i mean if you're going to get non technical about it you should carry through the nontechnical and then the repo man is in the same position as the nontraditional foreclosure  person i don't think so you're not i don't think this is get very getting very technical i think it's actually looking at the key issues in the text for what congress had in mind we know from six sixty nine hundred six what congress had in mind for people in forcing security interests because that's the only provision that applies to them and again it talks about disabling property or dispossessing property taking possession of it that describes traditional report activity to a t now it doesn't describe the separate activity of then taking that interest now that you have a you got you have the car back its terms nontraditional foreclosures as part of what a non judicial foreclosure is but it extends beyond that because unlike the repo man the foreclosure agent is is demanding payment they're sending in notice they're leveraging the interest trying to obtain payment and they're the ones that are instructing the property to be sold you're trying to explain why this third sense is in there and i understand that and then drawing the distinction between repo and nontraditional foreclosures p reform wrong about this the history of how this came about was there was debate about whether those who enforce security interests would be covered under debt collection that collector or not there were two polar positions yes and no and what congress sent it up with was something in between is that correct it is correct but i would draw a different in the something in between though it's hard to just read that in between languages repro not nontraditional for clover not at all your own i think that's exactly that's how hard  pay requires now the compromise that congress struck is they recognize some people will enforce security interest without also collecting debts and so they subjected them to a single subsection that describes that a committee i think it's quite telling six does not talk about demanding payment it doesn't talk about selling assets and that is very different if you look to the type of regulations that apply in the foreclosure setting and this is really key when you have someone who is threatening to sell someone's house and they are stealing the wrong amount that are there tacking on unauthorized charges they make it very difficult for the homeowner to cure the debt and they can make it very difficult to actually pay the amount they're owed all the other steps in provisions apply to someone who's engaged in the foreclosure setting because they're actually sending letters that are leveraging the security interest to try to collect and if they fail to collect they're selling the house to obtain payment on the debt and the guy with the tow truck is not someone the car again two it includes people who are force and the statement that six hundred ninety two f starts with is a debt collector period may not use the unfair or unconscionable means to collect or attempt to collect any it seems to say that a security person is a debt collector and it says without limiting the general  foregoing without limiting that people who are in force then it's a security interest the following conduct in addition is a violation of the certain  e to help you but i'm reading again and it seems clearly the support your position it's basically saying these are two additional bad ways that they can violate being a de collector it's not limiting it to those two ways you are i don't even know what the repro argument was about in your brief that the repo arguments are pretty and your idea is to be adding it's also including if there was ever any exactly and so but that the reason that we brought up the repo example our brief is to show that there is an entire industry that clearly qualifies under the additional definition with that so i think that what's what it's really up what's really at issue is the unfair practices these people who were in for security interest cannot collect or tempt to collect any debt unfairly that's the first sentence and without limiting that oh they're unfair practices are not actionable when that sentence says it is to my mind well what am i missing there well you know i don't think you're missing anything i think the easiest way to read the statute is to start at the beginning and to see that  qualify under the main definition there's nothing that excludes you from the act and the fact that congress needs clear words of inclusion to capture certain people who don't fit within the main definition it doesn't justify excluding those people from that first  if i could thank you counsel it was a sham exam thank you mr chief justice and may it please the court when a law firm sends a notice to a state official initiating the state's non judicial foreclosure process and when the law firm is seeking only to enforce its client security interest does not engage in debt collection within the meaning of sorry you started that statement to list when you send a letter to the state official the issue here is not sending a letter to the state official the issue here is that you do something wrong in sending debt collection is the notice of election and demand the notice that is found in the joint appendix of pages thirty nine to forty one that is a notice that under colorado law is required to initiate the non judicial foreclosure pro now to be sure that notice requires disclosure of the amount the principal amount that is owed on the mortgage and it also requires disclosure of the identity of the holder of the note but beyond that that is not a notice that is even directed at the consumer now to be sure there are in the record in this case other documents that were sent to the consumer but even with for a go guard to those documents those documents as well either initiate the process or are incidental to the initiation of the process and critically they contain no demand for payment and the very fact of the initiation of a foreclosure process is that it ordinarily represents a decision on the part of the creditor to stop seeking payment instead to pursue an alternative remedy but in most cases will be i'm wrong i'm just assuming in most cases that if you start the foreclosure process and the debtor comes in and says ok i see you're serious about this and you know you to rearrange is the fire nancy or pays the debt that's the purpose right now at banks don't want to own houses they want to be paid and the reason they go to foreclosure is to get payment of the debt from the perspective of a creditor mr chief justice it is certainly true and it also happens to accord with common sense that the creditor would like to be made whole there are of course two means by which a creditor can be made whole the first is to obtain payment from the debtor and the second is the alternative the last resort to enforce a security interest now if we were dealing with the first sentence of the definition in isolation i would certainly be confident making the argument that this is not that collection in the abstract because what is taking place here is not an effort to obtain or demand payment from the debtor or consistent with the ordinary meaning of these terms it is at most an effort to initiate a process that could lead to the elimination or reduction of the debt and not everything that could lead to the elimination of  constitutes debt collection well i don't really understand that mr chairman i mean the whole point of getting the security interest in the first place is that the creditor has leverage in order to pressure the debtor to pay his debt and and it's an alternative way to collect the debt if the d fails to do so so how can it not be about payment of the debt well let me pick up on that formulation justice kagan i think it would be a different case if what was going on was that a creditor was using the threat of foreclosure to exact payment in other words if a creditor came in and said if you don't pay your overdue payment by friday i'm going to initiate non judicial foreclosure and i say that because i want to underscore that we're not looking for some sort of categor you say that or not explicitly isn't that how everybody understands a foreclosure notice they're going to foreclose on my house unless i come up with my some money i think that everyone would certainly understand that that is the consequence of a foreclosure proceeding i think my submission is a more modest one and again of course we're not considering this issue in the abstract because we have a limited purpose definition but if we were considering this issue in the abstract my point would simply be that not everything that might for instance increase someone's incentive to pay constitutes debt at all that's true but it's inherently community communicating a message that you need to repay the debt or you're going to lose the house as justice kagan says you you referred earlier a common sense will common sense tells you this is an effort to have you repay the debt well i don't think that that's true and let me offer a sort of slight why not why not one of the express words aren't there everyone who gets something like that who has the money and wants to understand this is this is a letter seeking to get you to repay i think the common sense is that anyone who received that letter would certainly have the incentive to pay if they could  because of course no one wants to lose their house again i think my submission is a more modest one and if you take a look at the case law there is actually a well developed body of case law in the lower courts not surprisingly on the question of what constitutes debt collection outside the for closure context because you might imagine this issue has arisen quite frequently in the four decades since the an act of the act those cases focus on whether as an objective matter there is an intent to induce payment and those cases have looked in the main at two factors first whether or not there is a demand for payment and second they look at the purpose and the context of the communication the animating purpose and exactly the animating purpose is to tell you you need to pay you're going to lose your house the animating purpose is to initiate the non judicial foreclosure process that is why the bank at issue here retained is how you want a war really i mean you can't you have both you and i think that leads me to the point about the limited purpose definition which you picked up on earlier in your colloquy with mr geyser and that is that if we know one thing from the history of the act it is that congress thought that the collection of debts and the enforcement of security interests were distinct concepts and we know that not just because of the language of the limited purpose definition but because congress really struggled with the question of whether to bring in entities whose principal purpose was the enforcement of security interest for all purposes whether to exclude them entirely or instead to bring them in only for purposes of a single provision where nobody knew how to set us you do have the word in directly in the first part and even if you think in the technical sense initiating foreclosure is not collecting the debt it certainly is an indirect effort to collect well i think that that makes it somewhat harder for me and again if we were arguing this case with a statute that just contained the first sentence i would argue that indirect debt collection refers as  to situations in which you engage in polemic very steps that facilitate the ultimate demand for payment for instance collecting information about the debtor but again what we know from the tax and from the history is that congress whatever de collection would mean in a platonic form congress thought about debt collection in the way that we think about it and in a way that is consistent of course with the traditional understanding at common law as we explained in our brief debt collection and of security interests have of course been distinct remedies the former was an in persona in action the latter and in ram action there are numerous places in federal law where the two are treated as distinct and so congress want to use the phrase enforcement of security interests was certainly not writing on a blank slate it meant to capture that body of law you are arguing i think that even if i disagree with you we disagree with you on the first sentence you win because of the yes that is correct i think  think i need on the third sense i guess the reason the response of our human is that's an odd way for congress to have excluded those who for security interests from the broad definition of debt collectors and the repo example you heard can you respond to that sure so first of all let me talk about the limited purpose definition and then i'll talk about if six the substantive provision that it incorporates with regard to the limited purpose definition i think that this is exactly the way that you would expect congress to have reached the goal the ox outcome or party who enforces security interest are subject only to one substantive provision let me give you an example and say that congress passed a statute that said that the supreme court shall have jurisdiction to review decisions of federal courts of appeals and for purposes of reviewing capital cases the supreme court also has jurisdiction to review decisions of the court of appeals for our armed forces i think that the natural inference from that would be that if you have a non capital case from the calf this court with laughter stiction and that's it that's not the most natural reading it's the also includes you would normally say that it doesn't include rather than to also include is additive and it's additive to a pretty broad collection as well you would say even though again argue window this would be included in the broad language it doesn't include this but instead it says it also includes this and then for the limited purpose it it's not the way you would have told congress to write the statute or you or your friend on the other side it's a very circuitous way of getting to your result congress never asked me how to write statutes mr chief justice but i think what i would say in response to that is that the fact that it's additive helps us because it reinforces the sense that congress thought that the collection of debts was distinct from the enforcement of security and now you know if you're counting on your argument about sentence one again and i think that these questions are really questions that assume that you're wrong on sentence one assume that these are debt collectors under the definition that congress is gave and the question is why we should then read an additive provision to exclude people from that general definition so i think first i would say that i don't think that you could say that debt collection and is an ambiguously so expansive as to cover this situ well i guess i want to make you think on that but if you do presume that for purposes of this question i think what i would say is that congress still viewed enforcement of security interests as distinct and what you what i would say with regard to the fallback definition is that it can't be narrowed to this almost impossibly small category of security interest in forster's to which my friend mr geyser refers first i don't think he disputes the proposition that what we were doing in this case was the enforcement of a security interest in other words i don't think he takes a narrower view of the meaning of that well established concept instead his view as i understand it is that to take his venn diagram there is at least some sliver of security interest in forcers who would be who would not be covered by his expansive definition of debt collector but he would never the last fall within the limited purpose definition and these are these repo agents who are non communicative it's not even the entire category of repro agents it's a person who takes the car in the dead of night i think what i would say in response to that is that that doesn't solve his profound superfluity problem because i think that under his definition of debt collector even the uncommunicative repo agent would still qualify certainly when your is reapers as that creates every bit as much of an incentive to pay as receiving a notice that there might eventually be a foreclosure sale of your house and i think what is more i think it also potentially could lead in much the same way to the creditor being made whole and so i think one thing about petitioners submission here is that petitioner doesn't offer some alternative definition for debt collection i think that their position really is anything that creates an incentive to pay would qualify and i would respectfully submit that that goes further than the well established body of case law to which i referred on the subject of what constitutes debt collection and would also sweep in a range of innocuous communications as we explained in our brief on the third sentence i think what you're saying but tell me if i'm wrong is that even if we disagree with you on the first sentence a necessary promise of the third sentence is that congress notwithstanding the broad language of the first sentence must of thought that enforcement of security interests should be distinct from that collection i think that's right let me point to one more textual to that hopefully will be helpful to the court in that regard when the when congress is talking about this issue in sixteen ninety two a six it's talking about it in terms of the definition of debt collector and as we explain in our brief in order to be liable under the provision at issue here and really most of the provisions in the act you have to both be a debt collector and engaged in debt collection and i think in this definition congress sets up a contra distinction between on the one hand and entity whose principal purpose and has to be the principal purpose is the collection of debts and an entity whose principal purpose again the principal purpose is the enforcement of security interests and again that's another textual cue that suggests that this is an either or proposition that congress thought again whatever the meaning of debt collection in the abstract that these were distinct concepts after all if you take a look at the earlier bills which we quote i think at page twenty five of our brief congress uses that distinction throughout all of these bills congress is thinking about bringing in entities whose principal purpose is debt collection or the enforcement of security interests into the full ambit of the act now i say just a word about f six because i promise i was going to say something about that that is the substantive provision that is incorporated and that applies to these limited purpose security interest in forcers i think it's frankly a little bit unclear what that provision reaches exactly and i think it's frankly a little bit unclear whether that provision reaches for quote proceedings i think there's a pretty good argument that it does in a fairly limited way and no one's arguing that it would apply to the foreclosure proceedings at issue here but if that provision were somehow again read to apply only to the uncommunicative repo agent which again i thought was mr geysers submission then you would have expected congress to have used narrower language in the wounded purpose definition as well but instead again congress referred generically to the enforcement of security interests and justice sotomayor in response to the concern that you raised at the end of mr geysers argument i think what i would say is first that again the limited purpose definition refers specifically to eff sex and to the extent that that prayer for tori language beeks about that collection i think that just reflects the reality that f six applies not just to entities that are subject to the limited purpose definition but also of course to debt collectors who qualify under the broader definition i think the other statutory provision that i would just say a word about is the venue provision because that's a provision that mr geyser cited during his argument and with regard to that provision i think we would recognize that that provision establishes a federal venue for at least certain judicial foreclosure actions we certainly don't dispute that subsection one of that provision applies to judicial foreclosure but of course as we note in our brief judicial foreclosure are different from non judicial foreclosures this case only presents a question concerning non judicial foreclosures one of the characteristic features of a judicial foreclosure is the ability to seek a deficiency judgment and where a party seeks a deficiency judgment in the context of a judicial foreclosure proceeding we would concede that it is essentially demanding payment and therefore would qualify as a debt collector just as a party initiating a non judicial foreclosure would if they in fact accompanied that with a demand for payment and that just underscores the fact that all we're asking this court to do is a actually to say that the general tasks for debt collection would apply in this context such that if there were a demand for payment there would be debt collection and the provisions it is a  strange to think that congress intended to cover judicial foreclosures where a judge is supervising the process but not when it's a non judge supervise process so it's counter intuitive well i mean one or more damage i think can be done in a nontraditional foreclosure because there is no charge there to protect or review what's occurring i'm not sure well i'll sing to argue that because congress knew that nontraditional foreclosures were set forth in a very particular ways but they also knew judicial foreclosure so i think i'm just a so tomorrow what i would say about that is that it wasn't so much that congress was seeking to cover judicial foreclosures as that it was seeking to cover situations in which you're seeking payment and a judicial foreclosure is you will be well aware it is more like a typical lawsuit where a party is effectively bringing an end persona action is ordinarily the case or at least often the case against the debtor and in the context of that seeking payment that's really never the thing that's the problem with nontraditional foreclosure there's no winning that you take the property to sell it to pay off a part or the whole of that and i certainly am not here to dispute that reality i think i would say two things about nontraditional foreclosures in my short time left the first is that even non judicial foreclosures provide considerable protections to debtors and so do foreclosure actions well that is that is correct but i do think that non judicial foreclosures and colorado scheme is distinct in some ways be characteristic and others do require notice to be provided to debtors they do often provide at least some judicial mechanism for for instance a determination of whether or not a party is in default or review after a sale and there are certainly opportunities to void doesn't review after sales if you've lost your home well but there is the ability actually to unwind the seo where there is there is fraud or misrepresentations or other misconduct but i think that that brings me to the other point that i wanted to spend at least a couple of minutes on and that is this issue of conflicts with state law we point in our brief to a number very specific conflicts that would arise if petitioners interpretation were adopted and with respect to my friend mr geyser when he suggested that you should look at his briefs if you take a look at the relevant section of his reply brief pages twenty to twenty one he doesn't deny any of the specific conflicts the conflicts between the notice provisions and the limitations on communications the fact that the colorado law provides a mechanism for verification whereas in fact the f a provides a quite different mechanism for verification instead his submission is that you know there are other ways of dealing with this a party could consent a court could issue an order and as we explained in our brief those are not sufficient remedies for the situation because consent cannot be provided ex ante to a debt collector and because most of the requirements of the issue come from state statutes and not from judicial actions and the bond mr chief justice and may it please the court in the f t c p a congress made a considered compromise judgment to treat security interest in forcers as debt collectors for a single subsection of the act and not for the remainder including the provisions at issue here petitioners contrary position would nullify that congressional judgment by extending all of the x provisions to all security interest in forster's and his answer to that is this increasingly narrowed category that seems reverse engineered to pick up only a subset of repossession agents which he says saves the provision from superfluity that argument fails for two fundamental reasons first and foremost it's not what the statute says and it's a highly unnatural way to read the text if that's what congress is trying to do congress to use a well understood familiar term enforcement of security interests which i think petitioner concedes in his reply brief in this morning that that text does not naturally track this subset of repossession agents so if congress were really trying to do what petitioner suggests of just tacking on this small sliver of repression agents it's a highly unnatural way to go about it if instead as we submit congress was trying to preserve the existing distinction between enforcing security interest and debt collection and the practical difference between those two because when you enforce a security interest you're not asking the debtor to do anything if congress was trying to treat those two two things separately you would expect it to write a statute along these lines not really i mean this is a pretty unnatural way to do that too so the language undoubtedly could be clearer but what i think what comes from the text is that congress referred to enforcement of security interests as a distinct concept but just so i understand the nature of your argument i mean you could be saying look foreclosure proceedings don't fall within the general purpose definition they only fall within the limited purpose definition or you could be saying oh gosh we have a funny statute here they fit within both and now we have to figure out what to make of that so which argument do you make and so i think that the argument that we're making is that congress chose to treat these two things separate now then do you not answer and question take just if you have the general purpose provision itself do think only that's the only thing that the statute says but for closure proceedings fit or not i think that's a it's a very difficult question because you wouldn't have text that speaks directly to it and what you would look at with just that definition is the context including the historical definite  historical distinction and the practical difference between them so the question you would ask is when congress used the phrase debt collection or collection of any debt did it mean to preserve that distinction or sweep it aside and bring in all of article nine of the u c c and state foreclosure that it didn't use that language though and it's it seems significant language on the first step of justice kagan's question it's it in directly and when you're talking about collecting the debt indirectly well what are other examples of collecting that indirectly that would be better examples than foreclosing on on the mortgage so i think for indirect at collections would encompass things like publishing noticed it's not directed to the debtor but intended to shame the debtor into paying or trying to garnish his wages informally by going to the employer there are other things in that category but at the end of the day we're not here to argue about which reading of that first sentence is better we think each side has a plausible reading of that first sentence but at the end of the day the second sentence tells you how congress viewed these and it shows to regulate security interest in forster's separately and i think the second fundamental problem with using repo to save this from superfluity is that it doesn't actually do that as mr mcgann was explaining and some of the questions pointed out repossession or even this narrowed subset of repossession would constitute that collection under partition his own broad reading of that indirect clause the whole point of repossession is to take property to satisfy a debt and when you take so i'm sorry he doesn't because he says the credit is the care the repro man doesn't care about the dead he gets paid for taking the car and if the creditor gets the car the creditor accepted this exempted from the act because he can he's legally entitled for his then it not covered by the act to sell it so and so i'm not sure how you're right the repro man is not looking for the guy to sell and i think even mr shand said that if the repro guy said i will wait two three hours if you pay your debt i won't take your car that he could in fact be the collector so we agree on the last point we agree that if you engage in security interest and force meet but then go further and make threats or demand payment then that's debt collection we agree with that much but what i think is not correct is the idea that we possession is fundamentally different if you're taking property to be used to satisfy a debt it doesn't matter whether you sell it or indeed whether anyone sells it if jones lend smith one hundred dollars and then smith can't pay and then jones says well i'll take your watch that's debt collection whether jones keeps the watch for eighty years or sells it the next day the sale doesn't make a difference and more importantly to the other aspect of the collection that petitioner highlights the end incentives that are created or the message that sent surely with repossession that that would fall within his general definition as well t tow truck sends a powerful message that if you don't pay you're not getting your car back so i think the consumer or the debtor in petitioner's view would equally get that message that we must repay if i want my property back so petitioner's of you there's no purpose at further then he's a something more and you get into one but you're also worried about the state law and you don't want to create a situation where the state law says go to this procedure and they can't do it because of this act what happens if the person is exactly like this one does now for the fish and the payment and then that does violate some sections of this outside of a six and there is no state law requiring so i think he there is a state law for i guess here requiring you to go to newspapers there's a state law requiring you to communicate well what happens in the government if you if it's just the same as here but that last mention state law requiring you to advertise in newspapers for example doesn't exist so in that circumstance if you're going beyond this procedure set forth in state law to enforce a security interest then you're not within this part two definition you are well that's the part that puzzles me because exactly what i thought you would say and can i can you explain it a little because if you're outside of the main thing part one and only covered by f six because you did certain things i want the house and i'm not saying anything about deficiency just what happened here if you're outside it for the instance we're you get a conflict with state law why wouldn't you be outside it for the instance really don't get a conflict with state law so it's not about what state law requires for its own sake it's about identifying what's within the four corners of ins enforcement of a security interest th congress used and the best and at least the first place to look are the procedures a state law outlines to do though in other words you're saying if the state were exactly the same but it just didn't say anything about newspapers then his client would win so i think that does present a trick your question why where is the state while you're out there out there in there in their behavior is identical because if the state law prescribes the procedure that you're going through it's relatively easy for courts to determine that what you are doing isn't forcing a security interest if you're doing something that state law doesn't require then you have the more difficult question of under the general definition the first part one definition does this conduct constitute that collection so if you engage in repossession or any other enforcement of a security interest but you also send a demand letter that demand letter is not one i see what i understand and i'm sorry go ahead i just want to make sure i understand answer to the statute uses language primary purpose that collection primary purpose security interest sense is one and three are you saying that the test of the banks primary purpose is whether it's taking an action necessary under state law to collect on a security interest or to enforce a security interest so there are two separate things here to be a debt collector it has to be a primary purpose under the part two definition but but then that third sentence is also uses that language purpose exactly what is your answer that we determine that by reference to state mall and what is mandated in order to collect on a security interest to enforce security interest we determine whether what you're doing is security interest in force and by looking at state law that's right to determine whether your steps the actions you've taken or the things that are set forth in state i understand that you i'm sorry for interrupting you know so if state law if states non judicial foreclosure process also allows the creditor to get a deficiency judgment what in your view follows from that so i think you look to what the creditor does if the creditor brings it judicial foreclosure action and seeks a deficiency judgment from the finish then that conduct would be debt collection if the if the deck the creditor does not a deficiency judgment that's not that collection it's purely the enforcement of a security interest thank you counsel three minutes mr geyser thank you mr chief justice of like to serve for six hundred ninety two i because we heard very little about it from the other side six two i does not mention deficiency judgments it's point texas targeting an action to enforce an interest in real property securing the consumers obligation that's a foreclosure and it says specifically that this applies to debt collectors under the main definition who bring a legal action on a debt against a consumer it's a bit much to say this is regulating debt collectors but not debt collection when congress is using that type of language that's such a key point for us because it shows that congress understood that these two categories from these two sentences are not mutually exclusive and the court is right that it is very odd to say that congress would have read that language that clearly is an expansion as an exclusion that's not how congress drafts exclusions and they don't draft it in this statute that way which we know because they have a series of exclusions that does not include security enforcement my friend suggested that activity is just a sliver this is an entire industry and it's absolutely clear that a repossession agent does not want to make any contact with  consumer that's their goal because if there's a breach of the peace they can't take the car and they don't get paid the government suggested that reply activity is a is exactly the same as liquidating the car the problem with the government's argument is they're focusing on the wrong person six has a specific focus on the person and their individual activity the repo agents role is limited in the process chronologically comes before there is any debt collection on the repossessed item because it's a secured credit or after the fact that sending the notice and it's secured creditor after the fact that selling the car which makes it different for the conflicts issue with state law the conflicts here are not nearly first of all that there aren't actual conflicts they're not nearly as jarring is this court has adequately dealt with in hines first as jenkins when you have an entire state court procedure and see court rules when you look to the real conflicts with the publication of this that easily counts for having the creditor them or by getting advance consent from the consumer to provide the necessary approval at the time of the foreclosure which other courts have looked at and the position that we're taking has been the rule in multiple jurisdictions now some for decades including in colorado for half as for a quarter century there's been no demonstrated effect on any state law for closer scheme foreclosures are taking place right the really there's no actual proven injury to the state's interest which is probably why not a single state showed up today with an amicus brief suggesting that this was somehow offensive to their personal schemes if they know for their questions to the extent you disha foreclosures have been viewed as a collection that whatever conflicts have worked out there have also been that have happened there have also get down oh absolutely which is why they did it's very easy to accommodate these interests and again congress understood that in the foreclosure context you could have someone in forcing security interest and still qualify under the main definition because it is additive language not exclusive language thank you counted all cases