clement your friend on the other side says that we ought to look to the sense of the passage and not to rules of syntax i know you have a dispute about what the sense of the passage is but as a general matter he's right isn't he i mean the drafters here weren't following the rule of redondo singular singular this or diagramming these sentences so why should we focus on one syntax to the extent that i think  interpretation weren't words adopted is that something we should consider at all i don't think it's something you should really consider and i think it is too little chremes to congress's own inability to address these problems in an ongoing way or prerecorded voice calls is a really special plea implied to pass that off and if one were to hold it the statute were limited to actual voice calls and not attached that would be an alternative route for ruling in our favor in this case the one other thing i would i would point you judge thomas there is an amicus brief by the washington legal foundation that addresses this issue specifically and what they went out is that in more recent statutes when congress is when congress addresses think you say in your brief and it seems to me that if we take your brand your opponent the commission then it would be unlawful for a person to use a cell  and in this case you have a pretty good long claim in my opinion and i'll ask your colleague from me of the thirty strong case on the consequences and justice alito i'm sorry mr coleman of the statutory phrase that we have to interpret in this case as a structure this fairly common it was two activities storing or producing telephone numbers followed by a modifying phrase using a random or sequential number generator people make statements like that all the time and you know what those who hear them or read them understand what they mean without looking at treatises on grammar syntax usage for interpretation and the way they do that is to ask what makes sense i think give you lots of examples but i have very little time for questioning so they they ask about the sense of it before they get to all this arcane stuff so the question in chunks out here is this doesn't make any sense to speak about storing a list of telephone numbers using a random or sequential number generator the best answer i can find in the briefs on your side is that there were systems that produced lists of numbers using such a generator and then  stored them but unless you can explain how the generator was used in the very process of storing the numbers i think you have a problem to actually have two quick things on that one and i do think readers of language have an advantage over listeners which is fake and look for the punctuation and i do think that the function waiting here is important but to get to the heart of your question i don't think there's anything nonsensical or redundant about talking about using a random generator number generator to store numbers i think it's not any different in principle with the phrase that a lot of people have used to describe a sense of the a t v s prohibition which is prohibited dialing of numbers using a random or sequential number generator in those contexts i think the senators are very sensible the shows are very sensible they just mean that you're using the number generator not to do the actual dialing or the actual storing but as part of the process of storing telephone parade of horribles that it read the way the other side wants it would cover devices to many devices i'm wondering if the issue is less with respond so with the t c p a being outdated when the act was passed nearly thirty years ago but it's phones didn't even exist even today it's still references pagers the t c p a but you are right to know that today almost all phones have the ability to store and dial telephone numbers if what congress wanted to do was stop a call that was automatic and that's what it accomplished would be its job not ours to update the t c p aide to bring it in line with the times to justice sotomayor i definitely think that it's congress job to update the statute but i don't think the problem with the other side of construction is something that only materializes with a moderate smart history of the t c p a has been the potential for it to be read way too broadly and i think since the very beginning the sensible way to avoid that outcome is to read using a random or sequential number generator to modify both to store and to produce firearm and what i want to know is what i'd be covered and i stabbed somebody with a knife i think you would just skated he would obviously be covered as you said somebody using a bayonet i suppose but i think that really gets to very clear that and you really don't know in the ordinary and i think that is a real problem not a main problem word an odd combination particularly think about sequential number generation where you generate thousands of numbers you have to store them someplace and it's really the fact that you're using the equipment to  problem that it generates is everybody's recognized so to speak is that it's awkward to speak of of an equipment storing anything using a random number generator that's what justice alito in just  out one potential response to that might be dead what judge perry called the th potential reading which is to say that the phrase using a random or sequential number generator modifies the object rather than the verbs and it would be sensible to talk about storing telephone numbers to be called that are to be called using a random number generator the problem there of course is a comma i see all that or a my question for you  is you didn't raise the th argument as a potential i'm not sure we need to rule it out would it but would it make any difference to you and your clients and any sensible way make a difference in the real world whether we were adopting the  alternative world or saying that the th might be a possibility to the discourses i think we would prevail equally under the form of alternatives and i don't and i have been standing here today i can't think of a practical justice good morning mr coleman i want to touch on what you talked about what congress was getting at in one thousand nine hundred and ninety one and just make sure i understand the structure of the statute your point about calls to the home only artificial or pre recorded calls to the home were prohibited why didn't congress also prohibit live calls live telemarketing calls to the home and then when you get to the other category of calls we're talking about to the specialized numbers congress again prohibits the artificial or prerecorded voice calls  taishan have been moved by the exception and b which says that liability doesn't attach if the call is made for emergency purposes or with the prior express consent of the called party and you know they've pointed out that under your interpretation they say listen the prior express consent would do no work for an eighty d s while i'm looking at the emergency purposes exception to liability and i'm wondering how either an a would have some utility i mean i guess what i'm getting at here is i'm wondering whether an abundance of caution you can imagine why congress wouldn't want any call that was placed for emergency purposes or a call that was placed with the express consent to give rise to liability however i mean it may not be that there's a very wide applicability for either one of those exceptions including the one for emergency services which i think would deprive the objection of some of its force that your interpretation renders the prior consent land lines unprotected would be inexplicably thank you counsel mr ellis mr chief justice a minute please the court and the government to you this case can and should begin and end with the statutory text under ordinary rules of grammar in kansas implausibility of a grammatical reading that might want to set approach he also plays a significant way on the purported consequences of the government's reading on the modern telemarketing industry but that our human misconceived the limited role that the a t p s definition plays in the statutory scheme both today and more importantly from the perspective of the one hundred and ninety one congress regardless of how the court resolve this case the t c p a will continue to probably prohibit robo calls to cell phones and residential line the fact of that i've seen anyone a t v s definition describes a universe of devices that are no longer in widespread use provides no basis for this court to adopt anything other than the most natural reading of the statutory text i welcome a court questions mr ellis you began by saying this case can begin and end with the statutory text are you saying it's a plain meaning case we think your honor that that the temptation we offer here is by far the most natural reading of the text just like a case in the other case where there's not agency action addition we haven't gone so far as to weigh in on whether we always think that in a contrary approach by c c would be permissible but i just i don't want to suggest that lacked that suggest any lack of confidence in our reading we do think it's by far the more natural one well i guess if you're saying it begins and ends with the text that doesn't leave much room for the f c c to adopt a different interpretation from the one you're advancing i think that's right or i don't think there's much room for a contra and contrary interpretation from the f c c without saying what they had to say but i agree with you completely that there's not a lot of room for a contrary interpretation here but that was a question not a statement  take how do you react to the notion that this is going to have disastrous consequences giving given technology that has developed since congress passed this and whether or not those consequences should enter those statute from nine hundred and ninety one and current technology which is vance did in ninety one cell phones are quite a few of them were the size of a loaf of bread and they're not  widespread use lots of people had car phones instead installed in the cars the we've had in legislation quite a change the industry's change to technology is far beyond anything we could have conceived of in ninety one at what point do we simply say and i understand the statutory construction and the what we're attempting to do with the statute but at what point do apply to a great deal technology that still in use today i think that's actually evidence of the t c b a success and not a reason to update the statute i had on the flip side as you suggest the respondents reading of the text does at least point what i'm asking is sometimes we use i think it's a little when we use these we make a great effort to interpret a statute that would really wasn't intended for the universe in which we operating them and what point do we just simply say that i think you can say that in an opinion i think the courts approach shouldn't change based on that i think that the code the right approach for the court is to still engage with  is the one that i asked mr chrome and doesn't make any sense to talk about a system that uses a random or sequential number generator in the very process of storing telephone numbers the nd is that in order for your interpretation to be right don't you have to show that there are or worse systems that stored numbers using such a generator but didn't use the generator to produce the numbers if otherwise there wouldn't be any point in separately covering stories so if you could cover those two in perhaps in reverse order i would appreciate it short of soft start with the latter st i i do think that this statute can be read to cover for the both verbs to do independent work but let me start by saying that i don't think that the requirement for the court to adopt our reading i think that the court of recognizing cases like remedy street and language failed that sometimes congress does adopt a b likely means i think it's kind of a it probably doesn't mean create as respondent suggest because a lot of dollars or eighty ss won't being used if what they do is create brand new ten digit numbers that never existed before they have to identify numbers that existed in the lawsuit against individual smartphone users actually prove it given that spark phones don't automatically dial phone numbers in the place of this in the way that  sequential number ng system does it doesn't seem like a smart phone can be an automatic telephone dialing system am i missing something why wasn't that the the  reason for reading things against the respondent reading this reading this last not applying to the responded so i have to whether the c p a the a t f evolution could include court the nd prong of that you doesn't include the word automatic and i think it's an open question as to whether that's the right way to read the statute courts of appeals on both sides of the split have assumed that the f c c has previously done it but again i think it's it's not actually there at the time that p c p a list and that is they were a fair number of state statutes that dealt with the same general subject matter area and every single one of those statutes to find an auto dialer to encompass at least seven machines that didn't sequential number generator so doesn't that suggest that your definition is wrong i mean would congress really have wanted to depart from all of those state statutes in this particular way so i don't think it reading is wrong i think what it suggests is that congress approached the similar the same problem in a different way and so it's true that all or almost all the state statutes included devices beyond those that use random or sequential number generators but it's also true that almost every sta to limit it only addressed devices that delivered a pre recorded voice and then regulated those devices congress came out that same problem in a different way by st for hitting all pre recorded voice calls to residential lines and to the but just a different approach and what and why is it that congress would have adopted that approach i mean if i understand what you're saying you're saying that congress decided to cover these predictive dialers when there was an automated or clean recorded voice but not when voice is there and i have my my my phone is it and the whole british about is the point the way they work the whole point of them is to serve time off the call so that there was a live operator available when the call was connected they w possibility that in the world time congress adopted the statute there were devices that used random number generators to store telephone numbers so what evidence do you have that that exists existed in the world number one number two the same question i posed mystical met with respect to one judge burner x one opinion called the th possible interpretation i understand the problems with it but it does overcome this difficulty and it wasn't addressed in the briefs and i'm just curious it wasn't addressed and whether we need to rule it out whether it make any difference going with the st versus the th so i guess your st question whether there were devices in the world that stored using or and generator to generate numbers and then immediately dial in or use them to generate numbers store them for subsequent dialing and i don't think it's natural to describe the latter system as using the random or central number generator just store the numbers in the same way that you might say that i have a backup power generator my home both generator and storage power for subsequent access or in the way you might say i might describe using a web browser to download and store a file that is to say doing something more than just browsing the web as consequences of that i think you should not leave it open i think it's not the best reading i understand that too that was my question not their ok i'm sorry i've been on my question is does it make any difference in the read world yes it does and the reason the difference they would make in the real world at least if you and i think you would understand it calling you their animal control number generator you could actually describe taking a set list sort of creekside the left and then calling them in random order but that is not a problem that congress is trying to get at what the a t f definition the problem was getting at with that definition and the kavanaugh thank you good morning mr ellis justice thomas and just a sort of my or i think and others have talked about the ill fit of the statuary language to current technology and i want to break that down with you a b because there are two as you've indicated two prohibitions here one is the prohibition on artificial or pre recorded voice calls and that covers are artificial or prerecorded voice calls to the house prohibition which only applies to the calls to specialized lines does not apply to calls to the house and because artificial in prerecorded calls are already prohibited must be getting at something different than artificial and prerecorded calls and i'm trying to figure out on one what one what's said getting at at the time what was the real world problem and two does that have any relevance at all today  making calls the cell phones which were unintentional at the time and were within cost of the risk the called party by the minute i think those sorts of problems there exacerbated by recorded voice calls but there are also  to choose whether this applies you know to this kind of storage situation or not and you in your colloquy with the chief justice suggested that of the f c c may have a narrow band of authority you weren't willing that out either and i guess i'm wondering if you could explain why you think any kind of chevron deference would apply here where we have two conflicting choices and we have to decide which is the best one because i would have thought that chevron  present premise of it is that when congress deliberately chooses open ended language or vague language it's implicitly delegated to the agency a range of discretion to make the choice but this kind of thorny statutory provision doesn't strike me as reflecting an implicit congressional choice to delegate to the f c c how to regulate this counsel mr garner mr chief justice and may please the court any method of interpretation textually the purpose of islam consequentialism favors affirm and here congressional purpose is overwhelmingly clear its privacy let me focus though on the text the issue here involves ordinary lexical meaning grammar and cognition and example to maintain or acquire lands to be developed using and the word or denotes to this thing categories storing and producing and the word order is significant nd the surpluses can and the words store and or are given real work to do only on our reading rd the harmonious reading canon the consent provision in the statute makes little sense with random number generation you obtain consent from known people th the presumption against ineffectiveness facebook would read the statute into oblivion because robo callers today use stored phone numbers to annoy people just as they often did in one thousand nine hundred and one in barges five months and two days ago this court repeatedly said that the act prohibits almost all unsolicited robo calls the borrower's numbers in that case would have been stored the court having invalidated the exception in that case facebook now argues for an across the board exemption effectively all auto dialers call a ler calls and messages are exempt they say in reading all this is called a viper ryan interpretation like a viper it kills the statute and privacy thank you  these various rules of construction viper rhyme or something else those are only part and we don't assume that the ordinary speaker is applying those canons or rules of syntax at all right your honor that's correct most native speakers of english competent use in one language understand for example cookbooks are full of statements that say using  probably useful way of settling all these questions would be to take a poll of one hundred order is ordinary speakers of english and ask them what it means right that's that would be the most useful rule of construction i'm not sure that it would just take a poll of everybody and say i mean it i think it would be a useful datum yes they sort of shifting a little bit here year you say that if most ordinary speakers of english would regard as robocall your honor the difficulty with having ordinary speakers or readers try to read a legislative definition like this is immediately people would be a little bit puzzled by the legal language they just would lawyers too i guess but the point is that congress didn't write the legislation with technical rules in mind and i think ordinary speakers wouldn't read them that way and so you just saw the most useful tool is kind of your st st blush reading it in terms of how it makes sense and i think most people's st blush would suggest that the your friends on the other side reading makes the most sense your honor i respectfully disagree if you take into account the actual meaning of the words but if you if you just looked at it sort of mechanically and hastily yes it's possible that that is the way it would strike people as justice holmes once said a well drafted statute this is paraphrase praising slightly well drafted statute must be able to withstand  s by an intellect fired with a desire to skew the meaning and i think that's a problem what significance does it make that the ordinary speaker of english we've been talking about would have a very different knowledge background about these things today than would one would have been one hundred and ninety one your honor i believe that t c p is more important today than ever because of advances in technology the  social media companies know exactly where you are at all times they know every mouse click that you've made for the last twenty years and they can target in a very manipulative way so that the basic technology of getting a message through to somebody who's carrying a handheld and ninety one a page or the most people would not realize that the collar i d s were cutting edge and had to be purchased separately that most people did not have cell phones in fact very few people did and they were large and car phones had been stopped so technology has changed and moved along very rapidly and don't you think it's rather odd that we are applying a statue fits almost and to a two to modern technology like facebook and instant messaging and cetera do you think that at some point those of us this is at least a sense of futility honor i don't the average american is very well familiar with robo calls and understand these numbers actually doesn't care whether they were randomly generated or or whether they were sold because they gave their number to somebody and in fact would probably be more offended if they understood that somebody that they had dealt with and trusted had sold their numbers to m the randomly generated anymore it's generated in other ways but you make my point about technology in the old days it would be randomly generated because there was no way anyone could have that much information and it instantaneously your honor in one hundred and ninety one there were lots of sort numbers that were called in fact i hesitate to talk about legislative history because i don't like talking about legislative history but lists and databases of known numbers came up over two hundred times generator's came up only four times in the whole legislative history thank you justice prior interesting  telephone number theory is that right or not that's not quite right your honor it's illegal for the equipment to call it has to be an automated dialing system not just what time there were systems those stories numbers both way and that's why you think they wanted to get it both way yes you're over that over time what happened is the world changes so everybody should you narrow it now that seems like the converse of a situation where you know the famous you know all the examples the the most over five is not going to be an endangered animal endangered species when  truth but here we're using it to contract the statute and economics is that supposedly wrong i thought they began to think about it that way reading it to recover the just random number generators which often we interpreted that to dynamically to adapt to changing circumstances looking at the context in which it is passed and how it's changed in order to decide how to do and t so here there are a few words over there that really help is there anything ruled with bringing us back to looking for the intent in terms of change over time did congress intended to change over time as technology changed and then using the tools at hand in the context demand it produced a more sensible interpretation what do you think your honor i have no quarrel with any justice who wanted to do that even though i but i mean you i look at you in your expert view what do you actually if if we had best power this stature might be a good candidate but we haven't claimed it so far and assuming we don't perhaps we have to put out of our mind the whole parade of horribles that  arises as a result of the advent of smartphones and social media so if we think about the technology that existed at the time when the statute was enacted this technology that seems to me to provide the greatest practical problem for your interpretation is called forwarding which i think was widely available when the statute was  e so when any machine that had a call call forwarding capacity at that time be covered under your interpretation your honor no nor would have an immediate answer in fact a normal cell phone a normal uses of cell phones do not amount tedious would have to have would have to be altered significantly to be difficulty in auto dialer but human intervention is the thing that makes it something that is not automatic anything that needs a push of a button to send a message automatic dialing is been preprogrammed to send messages automatically at intervals without human involvement well isn't it true that a least as of now everything that computers  requires at some point some degree of human intervention some degree of human instruction that is true your honor but that involves not uploading a list of numbers that involves human involvement but it's the selecting of the number to be called and when the call that is the human intervention the immediate placing of the call that the f c c the a c a and the the d c circuit and the th circuit have all held th clicking a mouse on a number it involves a human being placing sending a message or placing the call and it's the direct placement of the call thank you just counsel if we rule your way the logical consequence is that every cellphone owner would be subject to the harsh criminal and civil penalties of the it and by the way it seems don't please don't answer by saying it hasn't happened yet and the reason i say that is because if you get a ruling in your favor i know for sure that there will be lawsuits against individuals that were filed and your honor i believe article three judges know how to deal with those who die magine to be frivolous claims but facebook scary argument that all cell phones might with alterations be made into automatic dialers really should be no more of a feeling than the realization that all of us have hundreds of deadly weapons in our homes law abiding americans just don't use rope and kitchen knives that way  i think you don't have to answer me more clearly than you don't think that cell phone users will do what they won't do automated mass dialing or blitz messaging which isn't a normal function on a cell phone well i mean i do e mail blast with friends when i get to all sorts of now with face time and things of that nature soon we're doing basically automatic dialing and and people being joined together by that process so i don't i for one believe that we should think that our interpretation c circuit could actually disclaim the result of normal use of cellphones would produce liability but if there is a question of functional equivalence and the prohibition speaks of consent the difference between text messaging groups and friends is that everybody has consented there's not a problem the difficulty is when people's privacy is being invaded that's what the statute was driving at  kagan mr gordon you started off by noting that there are some kinds of statues or sentences where the meaning of the words is so clear that the mind gravitates toward  no your honor i don't think there's anything on grammatical about this sentence it's an unusual sentence unusual syntax rather shows the infinite variety of kinds of sentences that english speakers can devise but just as in using a of our us so you can generally cleaned it up i would say your honor maybe my better example is to maintain or acquire lands to be developed using eminent domain  where i take the point that it's just like sometimes you just grammar has to give way because the meaning is so clear and there's a meaning a so clear because you can't imagine eminent domain being used to maintain land it's kind of like what is but that's impossible and to to for your argument in your brief about you know what does it mean for domestic airline to drive i think that the points that mr clement might make here is that the meaning in year isn't so impossible you know there's a little bit of awkwardness about saying that a number generator stores numbers actually that can be explained by looking at the kinds of combined with the fact that it's the most dramatically proper way to read the sentence your honor would not conceded this more grammatically proper way of reading the sentence to me the if you look at the sentence it seems clear and the do you suppose from the text itself that congress was concerned about no numbers previously known numbers obtained from any source those are stored and numbers not previously kno but generated by one of these machines that covers the universe of numbers and the wording therefore makes sense another little thing i might mention linguistically is that some verbs lexical verbs they're  called feel complete on their own and store is one of those we all know what computer storage is but a word like produce if you say and produce the numbers that the the thing what does that mean it's sort of like a sentence the bird chirps and lives we know what the bird chirps means but lies what do you mean lies well the bird chirps and the lies comfortably in its nest now we wouldn't think that comfortably modifies chirps and it's that kind of needs to have the adverbial modifier explain to us what we mean by produce computer production could be the manufacture of computers it just doesn't it doesn't feel complete i think that's the when we look at the adverbial phrase there's nothing to indicate in the statute did it that it modifies only one of the verbs and rules of grammar usually indicate that when you have a clause like that offset by a comma it would recognized by grammars but the point is and if it is simply that we must look at the semantic content of the words we don't take the words as just fungible morphemes and say once you get the comma everything before it gets modified well let me ask you this in response to justice alito we're talking about what happens if if we were to interpret the statute your way and i guess i'm still a little unclear about the answer there  store a number if that is totally divorced from the random or sequential number generator and then to dial such number would seem to be enough others worried about our contemporary cell phones that can do that but even at the time of the statutes adoption there were phones that captured numbers that have been dialed and you could press redial why wouldn't and that was common even even the  used to dial the number i don't see where it excludes human actuation as part of the equation well if that's the word being defined automatic dialing system it must be the equipment itself that does the dialing of the the capacity to store and it has to have the capacity to dial it doesn't say it must do it solely by itself i mean no really changing the grammar away and i don't mean to your on it that is in the definition the capacity to store right considered automatic when when you place the call if you press the button that's that's what that's what congress can define anything to mean anything it wishes right that's correct you're right so it can define an automatic dialing system to mean whatever wishes and here at the find it to mean equipment which has the capacity to dial a stored number on your interpretation yes indeed quitman itself does the dialing is not coming from the oh you're putting a lot of words there so you're on of the it i'm looking at the definition itself the term a t f means equipment that has the capacity to dial such numbers it's the equipment the dials and the word automatic is the word being defined that that's where the courts and the f c c have gotten the idea that human intervention is so critical to take it out of the to take a normal cell phone use out of the realm of a t t s assume that a stand that's necessary to avoid a parade of horrible so st of all even if we agree with the other side here robo calls are still prohibited are the meaning artificial or pre recorded calls that part is not affected it's not involved in this case that part of the statutes not obsolete at all and that's part of the statute even if you were to lose will still operate to prohibit pre recorded or artificial calls to the home or to cell phones and was an exception applies correct your honor i don't believe that is correct robocall is defined in the traceback from last year congress defined it to include all violations of this statute that is assume i'm using it just to mean on artificial or pre recorded calls yes ok if i use it that way that part of the statute is not at issue in this case that part of the statute will still apply even if you were to lose this case correct yes you're on it ok then you said that the purpose of think you started with this the purpose of this separate  d s prohibition separate from the prohibition on artificial or prematurely because the purpose of this was privacy at least in part i think you suggested the problem in your inferior i by the whole entirety c p a is about private ok but it but this provision in particular and the problem with the structure of the statute that that creates is that the eighty d s prohibition does not apply to protections given in different ways by congress the residents did prohibit those prerecorded calls it was and they also have a do not call list that they are protected by in the case  phones and pagers and emergency numbers and so on it was a do not call mandate across the board unless you have consent or it's an emergency so there were then there were reasons perhaps for this one is that cell phones are carried on the person and they're therefore with you at all times like pagers they receive text messages and residential lines down and people were having to pay for receiving calls and some people still do by the way  on some plans but as one of the opinions in bar said in one thousand nine hundred and one the cell phone owner not only suffered the pleasure of receiving robo calls but also  come bind with screen recorders or artificial messages congress separate those two things and separately prohibited pre recorded artificial messages and then separately even with a live operator presumably does that doesn't that suggest the state statutes aren't especially probative here your honor i think they are working looking at for example the placement of using an artificial using a random or sequential number generator but there was a great deal of variation among the states and what we ended up with is a federal statute that is very nuanced and represents a great many legislative compromises thank you very much justice bear mr garner you've talked in a number of these in response to a number of the questions that you've been asked about the need for human intervention you know and response to justice course that you talked about a finger hitting the retail button or the finger hitting the stored number in the phone what about using the auto reply function on an i phone so i can set that up to say do not disturb me i'm driving or do not disturb me i'm sleeping and i can program the phone in this just comes out the i phone it's not special software to use be sent to my favorites or to all my contacts so is that the necessary human intervention i asked you whether that counts as human intervention because a lot of your argument leans on this idea of you know human intervention means that we're pressing the buttons on the phone that automatically make the call justice alito asked you know how far back does that go because within and within the statute and i'm not asking you for all of the arguments to that effect i'm only asking about the human intervention point with that be enough one step removed by using the auto reply function does that count as human intervention honor i don't really get it and why how do you tell when human intervention is close enough to not be human intervention anymore to be human intervention three there are difficult cases and asking about the consent because i want to ask you about something else so you talked in your briefs about this concept of sunni's this and i'm wondering whether you can identify any case because your opponents say there is none and which a court has relied on that concept and i ask because it strikes me as the kind of concept that might make sense in some interpretive context when one interprets some kind of language say literary language and you know you lean heavily on this idea that the ordinary speaker of language or what would make sense to people and kind of gets at that but gives it a different name is that a legal concept i mean you you actually on justice play don't talk about it in reading law but you do talk about it in modern english usage which of course gets at a far broader range of interpretive problems and grammar problems so is it a legal groups of grammar the court said that through the through the decades many times and is that is that a proposition that you would endorse it seems like going through the sense of the words of the purpose of the statute would be contrary to the recognize that we must look at the sense of the word understand and thank you consul mr garner you can take a few minutes to wrap up thank you your honor i take sixty seconds on facebook's reading it would have been possible even in one thousand nine hundred and one to download the entire phone book and auto dial every number with impunity thousands per minute as long as you stored the numbers on a floppy disk or hard drive just don't store them on algorithmic number generator a piece of equipment not even meant for storage the statute never sensibly meant that this case isn't about cell phones calling it's about cell phones being called it's about computer systems that send out millions of illegal calls and messages per day there's no reason to think that congress thought haphazard nonconsensual calls to be bad but targeted nonconsensual calls far more intrusive to be quite acceptable in bar this court said the debt collectors aren't free to send in the robots now facebook wants to free up all the robots for unsolicited calls we urge the court to reject this mis it's not technologically impossible as the pace and noble brave makes clear nor is it impossible as a matter of ordinary usage because as long as i'm using the generator is part of the storage process the word makes sense just like dialing using a random  generator the other reason it could matter is because there is a supreme fluid problem such that anything that uses a random number generator to store numbers will also use the generator to produce the numbers but if we're talking about a sort of fluid here there's a scope of the a t d s prohibitions without thinking but that phrase is a part of the statute nd there's been some discussion about how automatic something needs to be and whether that could save the cellphones there's two points to make about that your hon telephone dialing system says an automatic miss is using a random or sequential number generator but even if you read that word into the statute it doesn't solve the problem if i tell sherry to dial a number from  honor we ask that you reverse the th circuit thank you counsel the case is submitted