differently just because in the plain it what the interpretation was beneficial to the whistleblower and here it is not no i'm saying that in a mclean we had a different situation we had a situation is coupled with regulation rule or executive war therefore things that first of all there's no contrary legislative intent but the four things that congress did in this that you would be clear that it intended as to the right to a dissipating for it include regulations first of all they explicitly following profesional is of law and then there are some statutes and then at the end there are regulations so on this is on page forty three of the blue brief in this very statute congress explicitly included regulations in provisions of law that's one thing the court the congress did here secondly well congress included two other around for distinguishing between these multiple references to their answer on the term i see that in the section subsection paragraph that we're talking about here it doesn't refer to applicable executive order would be would be written that so we have one and explicit provision where i put it to you earlier the veterans preference where the word law is alert regulations legislative regulations of the type that we have involved here there are lots of regulations not even all executive orders it's pretty clear that they're at that not every executive order but certainly rule pronounce disobey but they also wanted to make sure that it wasn't untethered and they wanted to make sure that it wasn't completely open ended because of the need to have some kind of coordination and end in government sell that  whistleblower statute the disclosure the employees protected if the employee reasonably believed that it is it was proper to disclose that's the balance that's been taken here yana it's very clear the balance is not on the issue of whether it's lawful and that is whether there's a reasonable leaf so the ploy has not protected the blois wrong and this order is not unlawful the employee is not protected that that is the bout eliminate wrongdoing there are ten examples there are wrong doing and none of those if the employee follows the or none of those involved violations of a statute except the last one  places where i can see that it means statute is when it is combined with a list of other types of law in every other place in the statute i believe it's used generic the only time are eight minutes may please the court in order to accept the petitioners theory that law and in the statute means any legal authority we would have to the court would have to conclude the as a statute involved the fine is any binding legal authority that would even include collective bargaining agreements and and the image p b would be in a position of refereeing between disputes between supervisors and their subordinates about the meaning  of provisions of a collective bargaining agreement for example not to mention regulations it's just sweeping in regulations of significant or certain titles to the the code of federal regulations are some two hundred volumes so just adding sweeping regulations significant and so there needs to be given some meaning to the fact that rule regulation is found throughout was a bar protection act about twenty sometimes nine times in this provision t well be considered a law given it's an even if constitution is the highest law in the land as for everything else executive orders i think mcqueen made pretty clear that executive orders are not within the definition of law through the reasoning paragraph that is involved here read i think that refer to just statutes or does that refer something broader than just that it's the consistent reading would be that that also refers to just statutes and i think it's important that the the entire act be read in a clear and consistent manner because when we come to this provision we know you wouldn't you would make the same argument i take it with respect to the term lawfully well lawfully it's what permissible under a court order for example that that would be that would set within be testifying or otherwise lawfully assisting an individual of the court orders you to testify you testify l star regulation or a ruling all of this is against the backdrop and congress was aware of this against the backdrop of the obey now reeve later rule which does have some some built in exceptions although the very narrow exceptions there was an exception for there's an exception for imminent danger for example many of the hypotheticals in a petition brief deal with imminent danger for example someone trying to bring a gun orders outgun through the t s a area at the airport well that would cause imminent danger so that's within and existing exception to the obey now grieve later rule there is and there's another exception for a clearly  and and that seems to mean that there's no question between the supervisor and and this subordinate that the order is going to violate a law for example if my supervisor ordered me to deliver something to the court and he said go through every red light on the way we would both understand that he's asking me to do something clearly unlawful and then the third exception that i've seen in the case law is for irreparable harm which is where someone is ordered to do something for example fred documents where there's no way to go to go back in time and fix that so there were these built in exceptions and what this is actually come to take come right in the case of the what this does and with the amendment in two thousand and twelve is now an employee has the right to file an individual right of action appeal and bring the matter to the him as p b and so it's not just a matter of reporting a a prohibited personnel practice to the office of special counsel which they must do they must exhaust but then if the if he just gave you know it's nothing they now have this right to come to the m s b b and under the petitioners reading of the word law the m s p b would be refereeing just about every dispute imaginable between a supervisor and a support and in order to find that congress intended something that far reaching it would it would seem that there would be less subtle way of stating that then giving wall different multiple meanings throughout section twenty three zero two but it goes against you're making well it's a good i think everything i do with this provision is against the backdrop of the case law involving the obey now grieve later rule and so we can we can assume that congress is aware of that i only mean in the case while i think that congress means violations of statutes which could be fuzzy i mean i think there was discussion there was discussion in the hearings about whether that went too far violations of statutes  so it doesn't do the emmis people have to referee a little bit here in deciding whether a statute was violated and so that is broader than the existing exception in the case law for clearly it that is how that's what i mean mclean that's how the supreme court reasoned the reason that it would have to be in the next minute of congress based on the fact that in b eight you have laws used in the same sentence as an  or in between law and executive order so you have on the one side you have an act of congress prohibiting disclosure in the side of the president preventing disclosure and the court reasoned well only makes sense if this is going to the level of the president when the phrases were in different sections of the same act as supreme court still held and the only reasonable interpretation of congress using to those different terms was that the law did not include rule and regulation so here there is a much subsection b which contains the right to survey and it's included in subsection b nine specifically which is merely lines above the ninety that contains the right to disobey so this is much closer than a situation statute in order to exclude a rule or regulation no i don't i don't think there's any need to resolve that in this case as and that this case i think is best resolved by focusing on the fact that congress specifically mentioned rule and regulation congress intentionally omit and so is that a better argument then then saying that mclean actually decides th word we don't have it juxtaposed against of executive order which would imply congress versus the executive but here we don't have that so as is your argument really more of that because it knew how to mention rules comma in compliance with michael ation comma and in compliance with rule and then in one section said just lawfully then there would be maybe an analogy to what we have here whereas here we have the world law by itself we have that word has already been interpreted by the nine so not only do we have congress's reasoning in mclean that we can follow here almost point by point but we also have the presumption of concession interpretation that that congress well used the same term the same way throughout the statute and i would like to briefly address the argument that it's as absurd results there are some responses one is that to the extent that any of the examples involve rules  regulation there will be a right to disclose those those kinds of violations and congress that the keystone and heart of the w p a is the right to disclose provision congress knew how to be brought in expansive and it did that in the right to  saying employers can declare any violation of any a lot rule or regulation that was very broad in contrast to the right to disobey which just mentions violation of law by itself and it is even better a law and it makes sense that to distinguish between statutes and regulations in that way congress could very well have thought that it was that to leave the agency supervisors and managers  those those those supervisors and managers frequently have the authority to promulgated regulations and internal agency abroad so it makes sense to invest them with discretion in how to apply it to their own employees whereas congress could have that when it comes to its agencies couldn't pass rules or regulations that prohibited disclosure so in that case they were saying we need to carry out congress's overarching desire to protect whistleblowers cheer we're doing the opposite if we accept your argument there were competing policy interests in the claim just like there are competing policy interests here the government was arguing in the clean that there were national security concerns with its interpreting lot the way the supreme court ultimately did and the court  responding to that policy analysis that's that's a legitimate policy concern but we follow what congress and act not we're not going to happen to change congress's legislation simply because of a policy and to be sure and also mentioned language of the statute and it even omitted that the supreme court omitted to mention that the supreme court omitted to mention that elsewhere in legislative history congress  had had previously in the right as this court explained its decision in mclean the rights just blows originally had an exception for disclosure specifically prohibited by law trouble or regulation and congress changed i don't know of any authority that takes any of the hypotheticals that i've listed there that has applied a obeyed and greece in fact these are situations here none of these employee regulations i've never seen the the the authority  at least intended to cover executive orders but probably much more so they didn't the congress did not use the finite list war rule regulation because it was too limiting it was follow state criminal statutes state help malls i mean talking about defeating the purpose of this that you this that it was to eliminate wrongdoing in government this is this interpretation would would argue for or promote and put it in a provision that's surrounded by generic uses of the word a law and with the word a lot meaning statute only in those situations which there are several of them where it intends to have the