her argument next in key sixteen twelve seventy six digital realty trust versus summers mr sham again thank you mr chief justice and may it please the court the dodd frank act provides incentives to and protections for  whistleblowers that is individuals who have reported securities law violations to the f c c the question presented in this case is whether the statutory definition of whistleblower applies to the subsection of the statute that protects whistleblowers from retaliation for engaging in certain types of conduct the answer to that question is yes by its plain terms the statutory definition applies to the entirety of the section including the anti retaliation provision far from being absurd that plain text interpretation is entirely consistent with the history and the structure of the whistleblower provisions and with congress's overarching objective of promoting reporting to the f c c it also preserves the balance between the dodd frank act and the sarbanes oxley act which already provides broad protections to whistleblowers who report internally and even if the statute were somehow ambiguous the f c c as interpretation is not entitled to deference because its rule making was procedur defective this court should reject the interpretation of the ninth circuit and it should reverse the judgment of the ninth circuit in this case now by its terms the dodge frank x ante retaliation provision prohibits retaliation only against a particular category of persons namely whistleblowers and the statutory definition of whistleblower again by its terms applies in this section that section of course indisputably includes the retaliation pr as well as the award provisions and therefore the anti retaliation provision only applies to individuals who meet the statutory definition of whistleblower again individuals who have reported securities law violations to the f c c now as i said at the outset we believe that that's consistent with the history structure and objectives of the whistleblower provisions as to the history perhaps the most telling fact is the fact that an earlier version of the n t retaliation provision reached all employees congress  amended the provision to apply to a narrower set of individuals whistleblowers as to the structure of these provisions in our view the anti retaliation provision protects the very class of persons to whom the award provisions provide incentive be so justice ginsburg where an employee reports internally and then suffers an adverse action in the immediate aftermath of doing so the sarbanes oxley act will provide protection view the dodd frank acts and the retaliation provision only applies to individuals who report to the f c c and to be sure it applies to those individuals really without regard to the reason for retaliation so just to make clear what our affirmative interpretation of the anti retaliation provision and in particular the third was the third clause which was the last of the causes to be added reaches a situation in which an employee in fact reports to the f c c but is retaliated against because of an internal report or perhaps a report to another governmental entity and precisely because a report to the f c c will often confidential there may very well be cases in which the reason for the retaliation is not the report to the f c c which is covered by the first clause but is instead some other report such as an internal report now the primary argument on the other side as to why our interpretation is somehow absurd or as to why this is one of those exceptional circumstances where the court should not pay heed to the an ambiguous language is that there are relatively few cases that would be covered by the third cause but i don't think that there's really any basis for that conclusion here as the government recognizes in its brief around eighty percent of individuals who report to the f c c also report internally and so contrary to the reasoning of really believing case on the other side the second circuit's decision and berman we know that there certainly is a category of employees who report in both way so then the question becomes whether in fact there are very few cases in which an individual is able to get to the step of reporting to the f c c your argument on the other side is that when an employee reports internally retaliation will come so quickly that they will it protects from discrimination an employee who's been fired for initiating testifying in or assisting in any investigation or judicially ministry official action of the commission under  what law is the employee who's called by the f c c after another employee reports the violation and assisting in a c c it's an investigation under your reading that employee is not protected so and that i don't know that that employee is protected under the sarbanes oxley provision either the only thing that would protect that particular boy is the government's reading so justice  think you point up the reason why we actually think that our interpretation must be correct and that is because the first and the second clauses in subsection h one ag actually were already in the statute at the time that congress made the judgment to which i adverted a couple minutes ago to replace the broader term employees contractors or agents with a narrower term whistleblower now it may very well be that an individual in your circumstance is not covered by the sarbanes oxley act the critical point and they would be covered by this time they wouldn't but in our view in that circumstance the decision by congress to replace employees with the narrower term whistleblower in fact takes effect in other words if you have a circumstance in which you have employee you want who in fact reports the securities law violation to the s e c an employee to who merely testifies in proceeding the replacement of employee with whistleblower in fact knocks employee two out of the statute but we know that that was a considered judgment made by congress when the senate replaced the term employee with whistle blower the primary anomaly on which respondent and the government role is the purported anomaly relates not to the second clause but to the third cause their argument is that because the third cause was added at the last minute congress somehow was not aware of the fact that it was adding that clause to a statute that already by its terms limited the protected class as is always been arguing that speak for themselves but the people is arguing that whistleblower should be given a natural reading question that one where they get that because i'm not sure there's a natural reading but assuming i accept that proposition isn't the fact that a natural reading would cover that second employee and potentially the third employee who is required to report internally first isn't that reason enough because there are two conditions that would be rendered partially know the tury they would not or you needed the government they would not be surrendered just a sort of i r let me address that and then i do also want to address the premise about there being some ordinary meaning of whistleblower under our interpretation all three of these clauses have meaningful effect in other words our primary submission is that what congress was trying to do in the anti retaliation provisions was to provide broad protection to individuals who report securities law violations to the f c c whatever the reason for the retaliation and then congress spoke quite broadly in these three clauses as to the reasons for retaliation once you have reported a securities law violation to the  you're retaliated against for that report you're covered if you're retaliated against for your subsequent cooperation in s c c proceedings you're covered and if you're retaliated against for some internal report or some other report you are covered and again i do think that it is critical to get isn't that disjunction quite right a typical anti would to lieschen provision you would think well if i reported internally and i'm fired for it then i get my protection but here you're saying they don't get protection except if they do something completely unrelated they might have made a report to the f c c about a completely different topic they might have made it ten years earlier and that's going to give them protection even though they haven't been fired for anything remotely to do with that so justice kagan let me explain why i think that makes sense and i do want to address this purported anomaly with our interpretation with regard to the lack of a nexus between the internal report and the f c c report i think more generally the reason why this regime make sounds is precisely because congress adopted this more specific regime that provides heightened protection to in the words of the title of the statute securities whistleblowers against the backdrop of a broader regime for whistleblowers more generally in the sarbanes oxley act and we know that congress wanted those two anti retaliation regimes to co exist because in the very same section of dodd frank that added the dodd frank anti whistleblower provision section nine twenty two congress also amended and to some extent expanded the protection for whistleblowers more generally and the sarbanes oxley act those are subsection c section nine twenty two more generally now what respondent and the government are asking you to do to use the metaphor from the last argument is to view the third cause in particular of the anti retaliation provision is the proverbial elephant in a mou to say that when congress added the third clause it was essentially adding an all purpose anti retaliation provision and i think that if that was what congress was doing it would at a minimum substantially diminish the role of the sarbanes oxley act and he retaliation provision if not render it effectively superfluous and but if i could just decide just on understand what the theory is there are two employees and they both internally and they're both fired and one of them tough luck but the other one is going to get protection because he's filed a report with the f c c about some different matter entirely ten years earlier why does he get extra protection so congress was trying to create incentives for reporting to the f c c and it did so by providing a carrot in the form of incentives and they were provisions and stick in the form of an anti retaliation provision in cases where that employee employer number two suffers retaliation and again really without regard to whether the retaliation was because the employer happened to find out about the c report specifically and retaliate on that basis but you do raise the question of this purported anomaly because you could potentially have a case in which the employee makes a report to the f c c and then reports some  entirely unconnected conduct internally there could be some gap of time between those two things now in our view it's entirely possible that congress might very well have made the judgment that it wanted to provide protection that it wanted to provide incentive to employees who suffer retaliation over time and for a wide variety of disclosures but to the extent that the government in particular sort of cites this hypothetical where say five years has passed between the internal report and the report to the f c c any incidental over breath with our interpretation pales in comparison to the wild over breath of respondent and the government's interpretation because respondent and the government would conceivably cover cases in which an employee makes a disclosure that bears no relation to a securities file ation and tellingly the f c c itself in the regulation at issue here seem to recognize that absurdity because at the same time that the f c c unexpectedly dispensed with the requirement of reporting to the s e c it sought implicitly to narrow the category of disclosures that are covered by the third clause to disclosures involving securities law violations or section fifteen fourteen essay of sarbanes oxley and i think that that was a recognition that there are many many hypotheticals that one can posit under respondents and the government's interpretation they really have nothing to do with the securities laws at all and so again our co submission here justice kagan is that this is a very specific subset of cases that congress was targeting in the in the dodd frank act and much more specific than the much broader protection that was provided under sarbanes which manner would include the class of cases where the report or the information goes to an audit committee under circumstances such that we're the audit committee and others to do nothing about it he would perhaps wrongly but in a way that at least arguably doesn't he is providing for its defining a manner of reporting to the f c c and the manner includes just what i said reported to an  committee under circumstances where if no action is taken it is likely to end up with the f c c i don't i mean might not physically get there but nonetheless this is a classic cases where quite likely it will get to the as you see what's wrong with  a fire i think it has to get there in other words you know you'd actually has to get there i think that the whistleblower caught on the way because they don't get there because a snowstorm doesn't come under the statutory language and this is in the definition and subsection  six the whistleblower has to provide information to the commission now you're right that it goes on to say in a manner established by rule or regulation by the commission and i would submit just as prior that the commission does have broad authority to issue a regulation concerning how that information has to be provided and indeed the commission has done just that in rule twenty one af dash nine with regard to the award provisions and it says that you have to report either online or by using a particular form we have no quibble with that but what i don't think you can do contrary to a submission in one of the amicus briefs is to use the in the manner language to define away the separate requirement of reporting to the commission that is a distinct statutory requirement and again i don't think that the commission really has any leeway in that regard and i do think that the way that the commission went about the rule making here is telling as the court will be aware in the proposed rule the c issued a rule that merely tracked the statutory definition and the f c c provided no indication in the notice of proposed rulemaking that it was contemplating the possibility of dispensing with that requirement comment to that effect there were three comments out of the two hundred forty or so but seem to suggest that the commission might want to do that but i don't think that the mere fact that there were a small number of comments that suggested that is an indication that interested parties as a whole were on notice that this issue was potentially in play there were certainly some who thought that that would be desirable but there is nothing in the notice of proposed r making and to the extent that respondent and the government cite some language that suggests that the commission was considering broadening the application of the anti retaliation provision and inviting comments to that effect the very previous sentence in the notice or proposed rule making indicates that the commission intended to retain the requirement of reporting to the s e c so again there was no notice until such a time as the commission came out with its final rule and converted the one statutory definition of whistleblower into two and i think that there can be no better evidence of how nakedly a textual respondent and the government's interpretation is than the final rule itself which contains these two separate definitions the one for purposes of  word provisions and the other for purposes of the law and this is so i don't know quote this is you put your finger on simply i don't know what to do with i thought the argument made below plausible argument they have made a rule like the one i was just suggesting and then you come back and say well the rule making proceeding was no good they didn't tell anybody they were going to do this and this is way beyond dot  and then they say but you should have raised this earlier now there is some law on when you have to raise an attack on a rule established by a commission and there is some time limit  and and then there's no answer that i've found i don't know how that works what am i supposed to do with that have the abandon all that hear or one sure just as prior let me address that i do by the way i want to come back to just a sort of question about the ordinary meaning of words while i can look it up now well let me address your question first our submission our course the mission of the court is this is a simple case that can be resolved at step one of chevron the terms and reach of the statutory definition unambiguous and there's certainly no absurdity here if this court were somehow to get to step two of chevron we have an argument under ensue no motorcars that this court should not afford chevron deference because the rule making was procedurally defective the reasons that i've just mentioned the other side rightly points out that we did not make that argument below we don't believe that it is necessary for us to have made that argument below because this is just another argument in response to their claim that there should be chevron deference here and parenthetically this court's decision in its you know motor cars came down while the briefing was ongoing in the ninth circuit but as to the argument concerning timing because there is an argument made by the respondent there not by the government the were somehow out of time here let me explain why that's not true respondent relies on section i believe it's twenty four zero one which is the general six year limitations period for claims against the government that is the limitations period that is applicable in ordinary a p a actions we are not raising a freestanding a p a claim here our argument consistent with and see no motorcars is simply an argument that the rule should not be given chevron deference it's not even an argument that the rule is somehow invalid it's an argument that at most yes you see is entitled to skidmore deference here and so we don't think that it would be appropriate to apply the six year limitations period here and to the extent that respondent relies on the d c circuit decision in a case called gem broadcasting that was a case in which your elated party was essentially arguing for invalidity they were not making the type of argument we're making here now with regard to the ordinary meaning of whistleblower because i do want to finish up my answer to just a sort of iris question from now some time ago i think we would concede that the term whistleblower naturally refers to an individual who reports misconduct but i don't think that we would concede that there is an ordinary meaning as to the person to whom the misconduct is reported i think if anything if you look at sources like black's law dictionary they seem to suggest that you have to have reporting to a government authority and so you know i think that it is telling that contrary to the solicitor general's submission congress really is not using the unadorned term whistleblower very often in statute it's either using a different term or it is providing a definition for whistleblower and i think that that is again precisely what congress was doing here congress consciously made the decision to replace the term employee with the term whistleblower and congress added the third cause which is conce the three clauses to a statute that are already used the term whistleblower and this is just not one of those parroting matic cases in which the text points in one direction but there is legislative history to the contrary there's really no actual legislative history with regard to the third cause and it is quite telling that the government in its brief can muster no legislative history other than an article from law three sixty that it cites in footnote fifteen and if you take a look at that article and you take a look at the underlying e mails that are cited in that article there's really no indication even that the individual who allegedly proposed the third cause thought that what he was doing was extending the statute beyond the statutorily defined category of whistleblowers to individuals who merely report internally unless the court has any further questions i think i'll reserve my time for a bottle if needed thank you thank you counsel amendment with the modern trend of major whistleblowing legislation now to start with the justice kagan is point it isn't actually it is exactly true that petition is reading does create a serious anomaly if anyone reports to the  at any time it could be half a decade or a decade earlier on a completely unrelated issue there was a blow for life so any report they make at a later time is protected even if the information doesn't get to the f c c but i think there's actually an even greater anomaly my friend suggests that congress all they really were concerned about here was getting information to the government to the f c c take someone who reports internally as are often required to do under sarbanes oxley in their meeting we terminated and then the second they walk out of that meeting they report yes your honor and all the differences that he has maybe a shorter statute of limitations you have to go through an exhaustion procedure so so what is the anomaly about saying were you reporting directly to the f c c you're going to have a  sarbanes oxley sarbanes oxley doesn't even strengthens them in the cases where they report to the i c c which is what it sounds what reporting strengthens it just means you don't have to exhaust so what's the big deal but it would strengthen it in a way that would not protect people who occasionally do report to the f c c and protect people who later don't report to the f c c that doesn't make any sense and so i and the other thing it would be to is it puts the employer in a position of being entirely unaware of the critical factor that activate takes away protection under clause three so it's the employer is rarely knowledgeable about the i c c filing i believe the f c c rules require company confidentiality of the filing of it that's exactly right virtually always own employer is going to fire someone because of the journal reporting not because of this order that's right your honor but what that really shows is that this is a highly unusual form of an and i retaliation statute and retaliation statutes are designed to deter specific conduct and here we know that congress is focused on deterring specific conduct because subsection h is framed in terms of a prohibition on employers is employer shall not take certain acts against people engaged in certain conduct the use of whistleblowers entirely indirect it be highly unusual for congress to think that they were trying to bolster remedies and sarbanes oxley because they did realize these were highly ineffective there is evidence in the record we do cite studies in our brief sarbanes oxley which will happen frequently because not everyone who's not a lawyer is aware of all their rights under federal law the entire point that congress has made in this statute and consistent again with every piece of modern major whistleblowing sir how much clearer could congress have been to say in the section the following definitions shall i apply and whistleblower is defined as including a report to the commission what else would you have had congress do given all the anomalies that this would produce and how and how contrary this is to the modern trend of legislation that have to be a lot clearer than they were here the letter is clearer than in this section the following definitions shall apply how much clearer could there possibly been that is the same included a parent that a call after the word whistleblower that said as this term is used in sarbanes oxley or as this term is used in its ordinary idiomatic sense no one at that point would think that the definition subsection a six applies our contention is that the clear meaning from the t insurmountable than in this case i think it could be more or less your honor but i think the important point here is that having an incentive to skip over internal reporting would be disastrous to the modern schema securities regulation which turns on  bribes a little bit more willing to go with your not clear language maybe but it seems to make sense what congress was trying to do to paul of the language was because the ordinary whistleblower is protected under sarbanes oxley house too i have some exhaustion and it's a shorter statute of limitation and if you want to make it tougher which they do it makes sense in a statute that's mostly about awards for reporting to the f c c to say it's where the f c c is directly involved that we cut out the need to exhaust that we cut out the need while if in fact you read it your way we  basically eliminated sarbanes oxley because everybody bring it on this provision now but that's why when you say you know this is totally anomalous this is a disaster and succored sucker i say well you haven't shown me that yet so maybe you want to spend one minute on doing that sure i mean for your honor this would not eliminate this sarbanes oxley me bill scheme even though it was largely ineffective there could be some people who would prefer it because they don't have a congress wanted it was as and as a this is the ordinary progression of getting information to the government you first give the corporation a chance for self governance you give them the chance to swiftly and efficiently address the problem and to make sure that they re mediate whatever the violation is if they refuse to do it then you go to the government you have every employee obligated by law to report a violation or is it only certain the legal or regulatory obligation but they often do have a corporate obligation under the corporate why would congress want to treat boyers and accountants to the generous provisions of the whistleblower statute when they have an obligation anyway they're basically be incentivized to do what they're already legally obligated to do they've got a protection sarbanes oxley why put them on to the will whistleblower statute as well because congress saw examples and they saw this in enron where people were deterred from fulfilling those roles in disclosing information and whistle blowing because they didn't want to be terminated and the threat of oxley and dot and that's the statute congress provided to incentivize them to do what they were legally obligated to do sure and congress specifically singled out the protections and serbians oxley something that needed to be  well it does expand people and in some situations like a self regulatory organizations who aren't covered under sarbanes oxley but notably then that doesn't apply for internal reporters in those groups under petition is reading so even though congress would have singled out those people and said these people should be protected from making internal disclosures they would actually have no legal protection at all if they didn't first report to the f c c which again is contrary to even the regulated stakeholders interests in this very setting we know from the chamber of commerce he submitted a lab or comments during the notice and comment process that the policy touchstone of dodd frank and i think this goes a little bit to justice briar's question she'd be preserving internal compliance systems i'd like to talk about that notice and comment period for just a moment seems to me you this plain language problems you've got to generate an ambiguity that's the first step of your your move in the second step is that the f c c is reasonably resolved ambiguity and then then the rule comes out and says reporting to the commission is not required in an addict's that reasoned opinion one line basically and then we have two circuits that actually gave deference to that interpretation and that seems to me to put the whole administrative process on its head because you're providing no notice to people no reasonable opportunity to comment maybe a few people spot the issue but most people don't age and see acts without the benefit of the notice and comment and is unable to issue a reasoned decision making and then we're supposed to defer to that to resolve this ambiguity help me out with that scheme and it just doesn't quite hold together for me to try to break it down into a number of steps up first to be clear i think we went under act under the better reading of the statute we don't even need any deference at all but to go through the steps on page seventy thousand five a law been in the federal register at the agency specifically asked for comments about whether to broaden or change the definition of whistleblower for purposes of the n r retaliations i said to the commission for reports to the commission that language in there to write well that language is in the initial in the initial it also suggested that you could qualify under the whistleblower protection without satisfying all the manners of reporting to the commission so i think there actually was some ambiguity there and again the f c c specifically requested comments on that exact issue three people did comment on it and suggested that it should make clear yes he should make clear that internal whistleblowers are covered the association of corporate counsel implied that they disassociate and that and then it is a pretty big group they assumed that internal whistleblowers were covered there's not a single comment out of the over the two hundred fifty or so that we disagree that it wasn't fairly put to the notice because they specifically requested comments on exactly this topic that's generally considered enough and as for the reason the explanation we think they did provide a sufficient basis certainly as as strong a basis is the agency provided in the long island case but i also want to make another point that i think goes back to the original definition of whistleblower big and i do think this is important and it shows that what congress really had in mind with a six had nothing to be in the outgrowth test which which i think this court has effectively endorsed by think there's some lack of clarity there too it doesn't require that the exact proposal be in nobody's point really i think is that notice we says were included who include who counts as a providing information to the commission does not put people on notice that they are including going to apply to people who don't provide information to the commission i mean that's english i would think now that's the am just bound by what seems to be your concession i guess i am but the argument below is abandon your honor i think that you can affirm on any ground that's present in the record so if you think that that's the better reading of it than then we would warmly embrace it but saying x and then doing not x or the opposite of x and then doing it in an empty dixit one line sentence is on reasoned and wouldn't normally get much difference for most in the first place because all that get you chevron the key issue in proceeding was how do you deal with the interaction between internal reporting and preserving internal compliance mechanisms and and b and i retaliation provision and making sure that the award program makes sense so i think the interaction of those that while corporations up we need to preserve internal compliance so we need to make sure that people first report internally and give corporations a chance to fix the problem that the necessary counterpart to that is people have to be protected when they internally report it doesn't make any sense to say that people have to engage in internal reporting yet they're unprotected when they do that i'd like to get to a six again the definition section does not end by saying the report has to go to the commission it says in a manner stablished by rule or regulation by the commission and i think that's important because congress realize if the commission needed to prevent the situation where the f c c has a big enforcement award and everyone comes out of the woodwork and they all cl entitlement to part of that award the manner established by the commission ensures that there is a simple easy way to track exactly who's eligible for warden who is not congress did not need to limit the n i retaliation section to whether a whistleblower filled out the right to do was do the right thing and to honor the corporate code of conduct by calling the misconduct to supervisors attention which again is exactly what all the the corporate stakeholders in this proceeding have said is their goal too no one thinks it's internally but in sarbanes oxley congress is focused intently on internal reporting and especially internal reporting of voyeurs and auditors so under my friends reading dodd frank would leave those critical groups or groups of this court in los inverses f m r recognize we're best equipped to spot and detect and prevent fraud out of these critical protections after congress recognized that sarbanes oxley had been ineffective in getting lawyers in authors and other employees to report internally  these critical whistleblower protections and we don't see any basis for carving those groups out of the statute the court has no further questions thank you counsel mister mr chief justice that may please the court the statutory definition of whistleblower is tailor made for the awards program but it does not fit in the retaliation programs giving the term its ordinary meaning in the retaliation context would harmonize the statute and avoid the you know that would result from woodenly applying the statutory definition some of those anomalies have been discussed already by the court but i do think the most drastic one is that applying the statutory definition which requires reporting to the commission into clause three of the retaliation provisions which protects internal reporting would decouple retaliation liability from the act that causes the retaliation and moreover would make employers liable for conduct that they don't know about now that in our view would be a one of a kind retaliation provision in the u s code so mr michaud i do think that that's a real anomaly and i also think if you really look at the way this statute came to be it's quite possible the way this provision gets in very late in the game that they didn't know that there were they forgot about this definitional provision and they were meaning it more in the ordinary language sense but there you are you have this definitional provision and it says what it says and it says it applies to this section and you have to have a really really severe anomaly to get over that so what makes and rise to that level it's odd it's book you'll hear it's probably not what congress meant but what makes it the kind of thing where we can just say we're going to ignore it so you know justice kagan i direct you to the last inverses swanny flute case which i think is often cited as as a canonical case on statutory definitions there was a worker's compensation case and the statute included the term injury which was defined understandably enough for worker's compensation case as injury on the job but there was a provision in which the employer was relieved from liability if employee had a preexisting injury and the court said if you apply the statutory definition to that preexisting injury and require that injury to be on the job that would be anomalous because it would unfairly assign liability to the employer and it would deter the statutory purpose of keeping employers from retaliating against disabled employees so i think that decision is analogous here you would deter employers from excuse me you would unfairly apportion liability to employers based on conduct that they don't know about and you would take out the premise of the retaliation provision because the very conduct that is an element in the retaliation claim reporting to the commission is different from the conduct for which they retaliated against the employer this sort of thing will come bring in other cases in which the government is involved and do you want us to write an opinion that uses the terminology that you just use so you have a statute with and that uses a particular term and there's a definitional provision in the statute and what we write is that the definition in this statute doesn't apply if it produces an anomaly is that the standard well you need to get out of the definitional provision i think you know if you look at the court has applied in fact in all the cases we cite starting with sony fruit and you know of any degree you don't have an absurdity here i mean the government concedes that subsection three would cover a subset of cases maybe not as much as  the government would like but it's not an absurd reading right that we're not arguing that it's absurd that that's correct justice course which it would however i do want to stress how narrow the meaning that would be left for clause three as well but i mean it's not just that it's not absurd it seems to me if you look at utility error it has to be not absurd or anomalous whatever you want to say it has to be cut very broadly i mean if you get to a tiny little thing you say well the definition doesn't work there it's one thing to say well then we're not go apply it to that provision the cases where you're allowed to move beyond the defined term or when if you stick to it it really makes a mess of the whole thing i agree mr chief justice but i think it's a pretty big mass that that petitioners reading is is making here the backdrop but there is and so the chief justices point and just aspires point is that if you were to make a hash of the entire statute and the meaning no meaning at all maybe maybe you don't you don't you don't even allege that here but let me try to response is just discourse which first of all i think it's quite clear that what congress was trying to do in dodd frank was bolster the remedies that were available under sarbanes oxley that's why we don't follow what they're trying to do we follow what they do do right well they didn't agree with me on that absolute are and what they did do was change the statute of limitations from six months to six years they changed the single back pay to double back you want to comment on the notice and and rule making procedures here in its reference to how much thought that it was appropriate to defer to that which seems to be allowing an agency to swallow a large amount of legislative power and judicial power in the process giving up our opportunity to to interpret the law as it is deficiency argument has a serious procedural deficiency of its own was not making an invalid of the arguments that it's asking for differences as your friend pointed out which is a different animal that's true and i do want to go to the merits of that but good as as your reading from the notice of proposed rulemaking i do want to point out it's the supreme court that's doing this in the first instance and no court in this case or any other cases has consulted this before but if you want to look at it i do think petitioner pointed to what we think is the closest statement in the rule  which is at page seventy thousand five hundred eleven and lays out you know as as my friend read the commission is seeking comments on whether it should promulgated rules regarding the implementation of the of this section should application of retaliation provisions be limited or broadened i think the fact that several information to the commission and that's that's kind of an important phrase there right i agree with that and i'm not saying that it couldn't have been written more deference that's not even our principal argument we're certainly happy to have chevron deference if you find the statute ambiguous but we we think you can resolve this without chevron deference simply as the ninth circuit did in its primary holding by saying that we have the best reading of the statute a number of the lower courts have done that too there's a district in nebraska opinion that we cite that i think is particularly helpful and evaluating the statute would you agree though that a notice and comment rule making that didn't provide for a notice shouldn't be deferred to i know is some support for that although this court has never taken the additional step of saying that the failure to meet the logical outgrowth test as distinguished from the inadequate explanation just hypothetically let's say whatever your logic a lot of protest is fails to  what implications that has for other cases where in fact you start chipping away in an unforeseen way i mean maybe i can think of a lot of reasons for not differing to the rule here among others it doesn't refer to man there is nothing in there about man the microphone i could think of reasons but i'm just saying that is not necessarily what you just said a lifetime concession on the part of the government is  no it's not but i do want to try to get back to the point about internal whistle blowing and internal reporting which i think is something that there is a unity of interest from employees employers and the commission and my friend why don't you give an award for that may answer mr chief justice we do actually give an award for people who report internally if the if the company then reports to the points on rebuttal and thank you mr chief justice the first with regard to these cases concerning statutory definitions i think if you look at the cases cited by respondent and the government most of those cases are cases in which either the terms of the statutory definition are ambiguous or in which the reach of the statutory definition is unclear whereas here both the terms and the reach of the statutory definition are unambiguous this court has refused to give effect to a statutory definition only where it would lead to absurd results and to be sure many of those cases are pre one nine hundred eighty six cases they do not use the term absurdity but they sound an absurdity and the perfect example of that is mr michel's favorite case lawson versus awami fruit that was a case in which if the statutory definition of disability were given a fact an employer would be liable for the entirety of an employee's disability even if the previous partial disability occurred when the employee was not on the job and the court said that that would lead to obvious in congruity as in the language and destroy the very purpose of the statute so again that's absurdity by any other name and to the extent that responded in the government seem to suggest that absurdity is not required here i would submit that it would be a very odd regime of statutory interpretation if this court were to apply a different standard to an ambiguous language in a statutory definition from the standard that it applies where you have unambiguous language anywhere else if anything were congress provides a specific statutory definition that ought to be given a fact and more respect rather than whites and to the extent that there may be some incidental over prof with our interpretation because one could posit a hypothetical in which there's really not and nexus between the internal report and the report to the  i would respectfully submit that this case is a lot like the court's last whistleblower case boston vs f m r where the court said that incident over breath the mere fact that one could think of hypotheticals involving gardeners nannies and housekeepers in the words of the court is not enough to invalidate an interpretation particularly where the contrary interpretation suffers from a similar deficiency the wild over breath to which i referred in my opening and my second point is just a brief point on the procedural issue concerning the rule making here i think justice course it put his finger on the exact language in the proposed rule that makes clear that the f c c was operating from the premise the reporting to the commission was required and to the extent that the commission asked whether the application of the anti retaliation provision could be of limited or broadened it was asking about limiting or broadening it in other ways such as by adding the same requirements the procedural requirements that apply to the for the award provisions to the anti retaliation provision as well and it is certainly true as mr geyser sad that this court and lower courts have often asked whether the final rule is somehow the logical outgrowth from the proposed rule but in the words of judge randolph from the d c circuit something cannot grow out of nothing and where there is nothing in the proposed rule to put interested parties on notice that an agency is considering a particular interpretation it would be the height of inequity to uphold a rule and to afford deference to the agency in those circumstances in our view the f c c is interpretation here was procedurally improper as well as substantively invalid and for that reason and the other reason set out in the briefs the judgment of the ninth circuit should be reversed thank you thank you counsel the case is submitted