well your argument first this morning in case fifteen eleven eleven eleven bank of america corporation versus city of miami in the consolidated case mr coffey thank you mr chief justice and may please the court the question in this case is whether cities can sue under one of our nation's most important laws the fair housing act our answer to that question is yes sometimes and i mean three things by that first the answer can't be yes all wins because that would have doctrines of this court proximate cause and zone of interest second the answer can't be no never because cities can identify concrete harms that fall within the zone of interests such as discrete expenditures to combat a particular defendant's racial misconduct and third this lawsuit fails both the zone of interest and proximate cause because the injury it seeks to remedy is unrelated to the acts purposes and because that injury is several steps removed from any alleged acts of petition city like the ngo in havens is combat ing discrete instances of discrimination by defendant and outplaying things so testers or something so if you took the allegations in this complaint and made them out to be the banks were engaged in some sort of discriminatory loans and the city had had to basically expend funds to test that out to enforce its housing statutes that looks very much like the one to one relationship that was that issue in haven person of interest and for proximate cause i'm sorry if the testers were not city employees in haven's they were private organization employees whose job it was to do this so why you attribute the testers were to the city directly because justice sotomayor in that case in this paragraph of the complaint it's appendix page twenty in haven's their complaint asks for the city's expenditures to combat specific things well and here there are direct expenditures insurers increased monitoring of the area by police and other services that are at those city expenditures so those are that's not haven just sort of are with respect i think that's quite stone your project but but but our position is that to the extent the city can i plead a complaint that looks like gladstone this gets back to justice ginsburg's question the second bucket in which the city can assert injur just like gladstone in which there's a segregation claim that is being advanced there was that racial stealers the realtors were literally steering african americans out of the village that is an anti discrimination harm to the village itself and of discrimination oh no i'm saying you're your honor i'm saying that to the extent that that segregation interest absolutely it is and that's what gladstone recognizes here's what it doesn't recognize though it doesn't recognize something like this complaint which is not that the city is pleading an anti discrimination interest were rather they are borrowing someone else's anti discrimination interests namely the discriminatory loans that happened so look our position is the direct victims can abby obviously sue for that but so too can the justice department and hud because that's what congress empowered them to do to have a version of parental patronize standing but what they're saying is well we're herm downstream buyer tax revenues and things like that that looks very much like the shareholder in thomson  stone the injury itself to the village was an anti discrimination injury that's the first part of gladstone's has found a page one ten of the opinion here they haven't identified an anti discrimination harm to the city of they've identified an economic harm so that's why this case is not within the zone of interests but the one there is it looks much as you could think of it this way the kind of two load stars in this court's cases one is the thomson shareholder the shareholder who has an economic injury no doubt they're hurt by an underlying act of discrimination at the front end against someone who is fired like the c e o who was fired for race discrimination or something like that but this court said ah that open fully consistent with thomson that is the language in the opinion itself it certainly was something justice kennedy raised oral argument and then picked up by justice pryor in thomson but the actual language of the opinion does talk about shareholders and it's not just thompson this court's unanimous  so something much the same about landlords and utility companies and if you accept their interpretation you are opening the door not just to the city but to anyone else who can borrow someone else's anti discrimination interest cut and  pasted your confession because asian your your formulation the city consider sometimes are you thinking that the city might be in the same position as home was  to outlay to combat a defendant's you know racial misconduct and so to the extent that a city wants to do that that's absolutely fine there's a second category but are you saying that and i don't want to foreclose prevent you from finishing your a you saying that the city is limited as to the damages that the we can recover on that theory in that bucket yes they'd be limited to the damages they're now in the second bucket the segregation is against the costs that they incur in trying to i would that be added police force or something you know i don't think it would be you know again that would i think run into proximate cause problems down the road because there are many steps of causality is everywhere goods what could the city recover for the general damages of having their segregated more segregated community a result of as a result of the defend his actions well i think that anything that they can directly outlane that may be very hard to identify and that's why normally this is done more on the and i think the scheme congress hadn't planned to give prendes patra standing to the justice department and to hide to bring these cases to your your concession runs into the same problem as your main argument i mean if the city can recover for having a more segregated environment they seem to be measured by all sorts of things including tourists aren't going to want to visit it as much how would you measure the damages if the harm is simply having a more segregated city i don't know that it discrimination interest that they have suffered they can't cut and paste and borrow someone else's so to the extent we're talking about is this complaint is kind of diminution in tax bases and so on and that's their injury that is not an anti discrimination injury and distinctive kind of administrative antidiscrimination statut which really is focusing on community harms and we talked about this a lot in the texas housing case of a couple of years ago so it's not just individuals who are harmed it's communities who are harmed and that's the basic idea of the entire statute why congress passed it and here the cities are standing up and saying every time you do this redlining and this reverse redlining essentially a community is becoming laid it and who better than the city to recognize that interest and to assert it but we certainly recognize that that is something that is at issue in one of the goals of the fair housing act but i think the way congress dealt with that is not by saying cities are empowered to have some sort of parental patry i stand that's what they gave the justice department in hard and as well by the way justice kagan and thirty six ten f congress empowered state and local enforcement over housing discrimination to deal with those types of community center problems we're talking about but here they're not using any of that they're coming in and saying we are a quote person aggrieved and a person aggrieved in the statute whose chapter is entitled quote enforcement by private persons and our position is that they are a person aggrieved under the given congress purposes in the act because they're saying as you did this red line and as you did this reverse red line and our community is the thing that makes us a city which is becoming more and more blighted and that's what we're trying to recover for the costs of responding to that that the costs of not having revenues in order to carry out our services for that community and for others so just is not a guarantee this is their own interest in maintaining their communities free of the kind of racial discrimination that the act  causes neighborhood blight justice kagan if the if if the complaint were written to say that it was about segregation causing blight we would have no problem with it which is what i was saying to justice ginsburg with respect to zone of interest the city would fall within that zone of interest that's gladstone and that's what the kerner commission report which you're referring to says which is polite is caused not just on its own but it was a result of segregation the references to blight in the kernel commission report follow from here the city is saying you've done this red line and you've done this reverse redlining it does it's not that it just causes various foreclosures all over the city it's causing foreclosures and particular concentrated areas and it's doing that because of racial segregation and at the same time it's preventing that racial segregation from ever being lifted because those communities are becoming more and more blighted and less and less capable of becoming integrated communities so everything about this complaint is about racial segregation it seems to me justice kagan i'd encourage you to just look back to what you just said and then read it against their complaint because none of that's in the complex so do you think everything i just said if their complaint was written like that that that they could maintain this they could maintain a suit for segregation in the measure of damages won't be the measure of damages which they're seeking which is recovery for the two thousand and eight foreclosure crisis in miami and to the tune of billions of dollars nationwide it would be again  most and i want to get the proximate cause but it be at most the delta between a segregated community that it now exists as a result of the defendant's particular conduct and an integrated community that would have existed otherwise that would be the only measure of  damages how do you measure that i'm not sure and that's why i do think ultimately it may fail on proximate cause but at least we're we've been talking so far about zone of interest and that's of course all gladstone dealt with was own of interest and with respect to zone of interest i think that that complaint the one that justice kagan you read would satisfy zone of interest it would allow at least a city to come in and get injunctive relief to try and preserve the kind of community centered concepts that you're talking about now the question is would they be able to recover damages for that including damages to the diminution of the taxpayers it's certainly true justice ginsburg that gladstone has that line at the end of page one ten which talks about diminution in tax revenues the next line is of the that's enough for article three standing so i don't think this court has ever decided the question of whether or not proximate cause principles allow a segregation lawsuit or advantage so far but  so i do think that that's right that is there are so many steps involved then you could just take a look at this complaint and if you look at the solicitor general's before page brief or page thirty you see all the steps that are required before the city is injured i do i think that this court has kind of thought about it that way you could look for example at lexmark and said you know i think what this court has said is you look to the underlying damages that are being sought to understand is the complaint within the kind of standard proximate cause principles and here if you accept their theory that chain you'll be doing something i don't know that this court has ever done before which is to allow such a long chain of causation a non direct cause of the chain of causation to the tune of again hundred eighty eight reenactment of the one thousand nine hundred sixty eight language and in each of these three cases in traffic canty in gladstone in haven's the court very specifically says that this language stretches to the limit of article three so congress is amending the statute in one thousand eight against that backdrop why shouldn't we understand that to mean that the language means it stretches to the limits of article was all to the limits and binding holdings and what this court said and i guess i don't understand that i mean we can argue about whether these were holdings or whether these were dicta and there are arguments on both sides of that but he i am on congress i mean suppose you were an advisor to a congressman and the congressman said ok i don't really like this idea of going to the limits of article three i think we should limit it you say no worries just use the same language and he says use the same language that language has been consistently understood to go to the limits of article three and you say oh no don't worry it's dicta and he says ok i feel relieved we can now use this language i mean wouldn't you be fired your honor i think i'd be fired if i did what you said which congressional ratification doctrine is only a guide toward what congress implicitly thought and at least starting in one nine hundred eighty three in the block case and i think going even before that and the a g c case perhaps going even before that this court has said you need an express negation by congress in order facility will certainly but by the time of block which was a case about limiting standing in that was before nine hundred eighty eight so i think you've got that problem you'd also be fired justice kagan for another reason in your hypothetical which is the congressional report that you wrote the house report  report i don't read the that the house report that way the house report does refer to a couple of particular aspects of those cases the house report seems to need to cut against you because it makes clear that congress knew about those cases and those cases are of course the cases which said that stand in stretches to the limits of article three and if you really look at the legislative history of this act it's pretty clear that when congress act in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight it took off the shelf a bill that hundred eighty and in that bill there was a lot of discussion about whether standing should go to the limits of article three and congress was thinking of changing that language and drew de is the assistant attorney general for civil rights and the hud secretary they both come in and they tell congress if you change that language it's a problem because then you're cutting back on stand and and congress decided not to change that language because it wanted stablish is that real there was no explicit statement what the court did was look at the statute the endangered species statute look at its will and decide that any person any person and decided unjust fine and what it did was take the definition looked at by prior regulations examined by this court in its three cases establish article three standing and put in a definition of aggrieved that is very different from the normal definition that just a thought why is not it is not very different it is a plain jane inter definition of person agree it doesn't look like what you're talking about the endangered species act which allows any person to sue and if their interpretation is if it's accepted you'd be doing something i think for the first time in the federal code there is no all comers damages statute that allows anyone to sue the way their interpretation what now in proximate cause our main point to you is this this court in lexmark said there's a general rule and this is an independent argument from zone of interest there's a general rule that says that liability is cut off after the first step if you adopt this theory of the complaint you're accepting step liability in a way that this court has never done before and most this court and lexmark unanimously said you can expand a little bit beyond the first step for a kind of one to one relationship but here this core of this complaint is seeking damages for the foreclosure crisis of two thousand and eight something that is a way beyond anything this court has insisted on when you say that when you said to me that the complaint that i wrote would have been covered by the act do you think it also would fall within proximate cause principles i think that the complaint would have to satisfy a directness requirement so to the extent that the city could identify segregation intra segregation harms directly in the way that maybe university could when they become you know when they lose diversity or something like that to the extent there is some kind of direct under one of the relationship absolutely one hundred percent every day of the week and of course congress could write a statute that will enable something in abrogate the traditional proximate cause doctrine but here they haven't done any of that here they have applied again a kind of plain jane version of damages and what they're seeking here with this creative complaint which you know the fair housing act has been around since before i was born and only talk couple years ago we ever seen a complaint that looks anything like this here they are seeking to recover for the foreclosure crisis of two thousand and eight that can't possibly satisfy proximate cause principles starting with justice holmes opinion in southern pacific in one nine hundred eighteen going all the way to the holmes opinion of this court just more recently as we got kind of holmes and holmes what is one understanding i  guess when i started reading the briefs i was confused about this because this one understanding a proximate cause which is that usually proximate cause is about first the ability and only for c ability now there are definitely places where we've said there's an additional direct in pretty discrete areas and i guess i think i sort of come back to this notion that i think what art or a precedent suggests is it's a little bit statute by statute as to whether proximate cause is a foresee lose the benefits of social professional and business opportunities that come with an integrated community free from housing discrimination now you heard my friend describe if the complaint makes that out clearly then we do have standing that we fit within the zone of interest we thought that the original complaint that we filed made this apparent the eleventh circuit agreed with us but when the district court dismissed us with prejudice on the original complaint we made a motion for reconsideration to try to make more explicit what we thought was implicit in this complaint as a result the court did deny us the opportunity to do that but if you look at that amended complaint it does talk about the fact that the city operates a department of community and economic development which takes complaints about fair housing the trust of mediated the councils that educate about it and its interest of all these kinds of efforts that we thought were part of our original complaint at the same time we recognize that the injury to the city is one that comes from the failure to foll i'm looking at to trying to peddle ph one eighty six you're opening paragraph where you say contact has harmed the residents of miami and impaired the straw the city's strong longstanding and active commitment to open integrated residential housing patterns and its attendant benefits of creating a stable community community and then you go on to the specific damages loss of tax revenues and increase expenses those types of allegations in your amended complaint that you're pointing to aren't by point to those i point to the those on two thirty two and thirty two thirty three which describe the operation of all of our department of community and economic approach to standing in this case or taking a more narrow formulation that depends on the fact that we are agreement is tied to violations of the  and and the i don't understand either back in their briefs to disagree with us on that as long as we make those pleadings and so it seems odd that we would be prevented from making those pleading would certainly under rule fifteen you think you are a direct victim of discrimination because thing to me that the damage you seek are not going to be paid to those who are the direct victims of the discrimination we are seeking we are direct a direct victim this court has repeatedly in all three cases dealing with standing under the fair housing act recognize that it's direct and indirect damages that are at issue  the subprime mortgages who suffered foreclosure and so on you don't start with you understand your argument that you're down the line but i don't see how you can say that your loss of property taxes is a direct injury it is a direct and what we're saying suffer loss of sales taxes because of the blight on the community it's less attractive tourists so you lose tourist revenues why why would we do would you be able to recover lost in tourist revenues we do not think you do get property taxes so what is it that cuts off the chain what we believe that because it has to be tied specifically to the property so we can get property taxes how do it how do our in cost of increased services whether it's police or whatever regular not claiming for the increased services of police but put our department that has to look for unsafe structures and find those structures because they've been abandoned after foreclosure that to our department that has to remediate now one thing that my friend also said was that we're seeking billions now in our complaint we we mention the fact that we have lost millions not hundreds of millions not billions in property taxes we know that  before the city of miami brought its case the cities of memphis and baltimore both brought cases and they ended up settling cases with identical types of allegations for less than ten million each so we're not talking about huge sums of money that will presumably one of the issues factored in the settlement was the question as presented today if you do prevail they would have to give up a percentage on the possibility that they might not be stated plain you know it's possible at that point i don't believe anyone had raised proximate cause as a separate issue but the city's ha survived multiple motions to dismiss that went to the zone of interest so that is what caused the other cities to see the survival of that and the settlement of those cases as a possibility to bring these cases mr pack which is  back to the question the chief story witches how do you define the limits of your force foreseeability yes clearly less tourism less sales tax less of a lot of other things can be potentially foreseeable but you're suggesting they're not recoverable so is it because they're now foreseeable or is it because they're not measurable i think they're difficult to measure and they're very maybe foreseeable but i think that also there's the potential for superseding events that cut off the causal chain there but here when you want to use the word th phrase the concept proximate cause in determining how for damages extend you know i think it it provides some help but not a great deal of help in lexmark for example so what home loans so therefore we think we've we've tried to cabin our damages with respect to those specific properties and the damages that they generate directly to the city you know proposed damages the first tightly connected to the actual injury that the city has suffered we have to go into that or not i'm done i'm not saying we should or shouldn't be do we have to decide this case damages what damages are appropriate you do not need to decide that in fact one of the things that the eleventh circuit noted is that in the time between when the briefs were written and when we argued the case this court came down with a decision inclusive communities and in that decision the courts mention that there is a proximate cause pleading standard that needs to be incorporated and the eleventh circuit said we're not going to delve into what that exactly is and much based on the experience in it baltimore and memphis well i just think that the the the fact that our opponents of indicated that we're talking about billions and billions of dollars and that this is about the two thousand and eight lending but the kinds of loans that are being offered here have taken different forms but the underlying practice remains the same that minority borrowers are getting more expensive and risk your loans that are quicker to loans predatory loans are used as a sort of a generic term to talk about taking advantage of a borrower subprime loans or are simply those loans that have interest rates that are so low that it looks like it's a wonderful deal until of are all considered pretty for you suppose you have a business that is losing money losing employees because the neighborhood is deteriorating do they have a stronger or a weaker claim than you do they've lost profit from their business because they were hood has been debilitated i think they have a weaker claim we have a claim that's tied to the fatter property owners to the very property owners but they are also commercial property owners and  there's no no damage to their personal property but but here what we're saying is if i can step back for a moment the endangered species act this court is going to pursue spears recognize that article three standing applies endangered species act but you still have to make a claim that's based on an interest in the preservation of animals you can't make a claim based on discrimination as it applies to housing discrimination or something like that there is used and they provide services to every one of these residents and so therefore didn't the business owner have an interest in running his business in an integrated vibrant neighborhood just as the city would have i would say less direct interest in having that neighborhood preserved in the city you know it may be so that the any particular business does have that interest but i think that it's very difficult to claim the kinds of damages claim remember one difference between the f h a and and title seven for example is that we recognize indirect harms we live our neighbors testers nonprofit organizations and charities and developers and real estate brokers all to sue to vindicate that interest we don't allow the you know the equivalent of a neighbor a coworker to bring an action for discrimination that's been visited upon one of their their colleagues we don't allow others within that kind of realm to bring these actions and i think that's part of the problem that a business that makes this claim might have so in the end what i'm suggesting is that there are direct injuries by virtue of these to what my friend describes as pockets of direct injury to the city in its efforts to secure fair housing by draining those resources and those resources are recoverable and that that indeed satisfies any kind of proximate cause as well as an injury to that interest in an integrated community that allows the business opportunities the social opportunit the professional opportunities the flow that this court recognized in the gladstone case and suggested that the appropriate and even my friend in his brief suggested the appropriate damages in such an instance is the loss of property values and property taxes which frankly are part and parcel of this whole mortgage loan industry so we're not asking for something that's different that's out of the realm that away from what this far afield from it that we are outside the zone of interest whatever zone of interest applies because after all it's not a very demanding test and there's a reason for that and that's because we are aggrieved in every sense of the word by fide that result with its one thousand nine hundred amendments to the fair housing act and the court should hold that the same injury is still cognizable today whether under article three rationale or a broad zone of interest rationale if i could turn to some of the points that have already come up today my friend on the other side says that you can't cut and paste injury from one plaintiff to one victim of discrimination to another that's an argument that gladstone specifically rejected in footnote nine the court said that what matters here and this is what was this is what was the breadth of the trilogy of terror housing are cases that the court decided between one thousand nine hundred two and one thousand nine hundred two is that somebody has had their legal rights violated by discriminatory housing practices it doesn't necessarily have to be the plaintiffs legal rights the plaintiff has to be injured by that violation but it doesn't have to be their rights that are violated and that's what we think is b s the work that's being done by the atypical definition of aggrieved person that congress put back into the statute that's a very broad statement mr gannon what do you do then with the restaurant or the dry cleaner or the laundry or whatever that wants to sue for somebody else's discriminate well i agree with my friends on both sides that that limit is going to come from the proximate cause analysis we don't disagree that there is still a proximate cause limitation implicit in the statute and here we think that although gladstone didn't address proximate cause in those terms it is important and significant that the court there said that the city is directly injured by the decrease in property values and we think that the test the ultimate test that this court stated in lexmark of course the court has repeatedly recognized that proximate cause is a statute by statute situational inquiry that depends upon the nature of the individual statutes but the ultimate test is whether there is a sufficiently close connection to the conduct that the statute prohibits and what this statute prohibits is discriminatory housing practice i mean need to go into it how does proximate cause help you could have the dry cleaner or you could have a magazine that writes about successes in integration and wants to write about this community before it got wrecked or whatever clothes could be absolutely clear absolutely clear fifteen bishops test photos totally cost related well absolutely do they all have suits well i think i think that what we're saying they haven't even argued that i know and i think i think that to the extent that they can get themselves into the into the home framework from havens then maybe they can say that they have specific costs that are associated with fighting discrimination but i wanted to say that i don't know what they have you heard of the question was the question before and it still is if we get into it we may not need to but if we did it would be somebody in alaska who writes magazine articles about successes in the integration is going to be wrecked because they don't have the integration that is prime example and absolutely clear the causal connection we  always about determining that something that is caused is still too far away either in terms of foreseeability or distance or intervening cause or something else and so proximate cause by definition is carving out something that otherwise would be caused by otherwise it wouldn't be doing anything different from traceability analysis under article three and here we think that the reason why this is sufficiently closely connected to the conduct that the statute prohibits is that this statute prohibits discriminatory housing practices and those practices include things like the terms and conditions of the sale of mental of property things about their real estate related transactions things like blockbusting which was specifically prohibited by thirty six so for easy question was a practice in which somebody would go into a neighborhood and induce artificially low priced panic selling by saying there are minorities coming into this neighborhood that conduct mr had in fact i'm dropping prices how do we write it to the corner grocer who had been running accounts with back home or the gardener who every week clean the property i doubt someone who's in foreclosure can afford a garden but let's assume that possibility  why how do we write that the city has standing and it's injuries are approximately cause but those people don't i think kompany shareholder what's the how do we see the link that we see is is to property values and that's so that's the injury that the court already recognizing gladstone this is a question of congressional intent and your point when you're considering proximate cause you're trying to figure out what congress intended this court had already recognized that a city was directly injured by decreased property values the same thing it said was true of the neighbors in clad stone the neighbors who had the property values diminish were able to recover i would say that the corner store to the extent that it has his property values diminish situated just like one of those neighbors to the extent that is talking about something else like lost profits or the utility company is complaining they lost a comp a customer those things we think are further afield and not so closely connected and proximate causes traditionally done concrete answers the you do you till the company you say it's further afield is it covered or not we think it's not covered we think that that what this court recognized in gladstone is something that congress is taking account of and the property value the yes real estate brokers who are involved in the transaction we discuss in our brief that those are the type of people who have an interest in the transaction even if it's just an economic interest they're able to recover i don't understand my friends on the other side to be disputing that that that if they have board i think that they're somehow different from the corner grocery store and get no i think if they were just generically saying business is down with my hypothetical that might be harder for them to establish the types of cases that that we've previously scene are where developers brokers real estate real estate agents have have talked about specific transactions that they can say that were caused by by discriminatory housing practices and if we do think it is important for the court to recall that those cases involve plaintiffs who don't necessarily have a quote unquote desegregation interest as my friend my friend on the other side puts it it is enough that they are injured in their economic interests and as the court pointed out inclusive communities or real estate developer is often a good plaintiff to challenge a local discriminatory housing practice we don't require that they add on that they are there something like the nonprofit in havens where in addition to wanting to make money off of developing their property they also have an interest in segregation and similarly as having to do with the position or value of the property if we think that the book the arms that flow directly from changes in property value were ones that congress contemplated both in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight and certainly hundred eight after this court had already had already a numerated that is a particular type of harm that was it issued here and we don't think that this city should have to establish that there's been a change in racial composition of the neighborhood in order to bring a suit because the fair housing act is intended to cover is intended to prohibit discriminatory housing practices throughout the united states and that includes segregated communities that aren't changing so if there is discrimination the city can sue based on isolated instances of discrimination to the extent that the basic pitch of the of your position is that it affects the community as a whole in the city has an interest in ensuring that the stability of the communities not that the city could enforce particular instances of this housing discrimination i think it's both i think that they do have the community representing interest and but i also think that to the extent that they can say we suffer a harm from this particular transaction let's assume it's just one particular apartment complex or something or do you know one particular home yet i suspect that that's one where there wouldn't be that much in it to have the city bring that suit instead of the individual lone owner but i don't know if there's that much in it can the city bring that and yes it to the extent that they can say that there is a wonder one relationship they are just like the microchip manufacturer and lexmark whenever there's a decline in property value on the part of the the primary victim or the homeowner here they suffer a court spawning decline in their tax revenue so the city can bring an action of this we're talking about here in the case of one prime mortgage that results in a foreclosure if they can say carville you have four minutes four points your honor first with respect to this complaining to paragraph one eighty six and so on we agree our blue reefer page thirty three says that they do identify an interest but they have to plausibly allege some impact on segregation in order to survive they haven't done that they haven't told you whether segregation is increasing or decreasing as a result of the banks conduct second the damages here they seek are way way broader than that what they painted out to be just the taxes in the complaint  bad enough indeed the bank of america petition sir petition page thirty four cites one of the complaints by the same counsel against cobb county seeking quote hundreds of millions of dollars there are nineteen nineteen thousand three hundred cities in america if you adopt their theory he'd be allowing all of them to bring complaints just like that now we've said that if you accept their interpretation you'd be opening the door the solicitor general says are proximate cause is somehow a limitation and that their own proximate cause test as a brief explains eliminates the directness requirement so i think it will be hard and that's why i don't think he had a answer just as prior on the magazine or things like that and when justice sotomayor you asked him how to write the opinion to avoid the gardner his answer was look at gladstone a direct reduction in property values that cannot be a consistent theory for this court on proximate cause principles for many reasons one of which is quite so it's not a park's macaws case at all it's not briefed or argued but second even that language  he's reading to you is only at the very end of gladstone saying that if you have a reduction in property values then it will directly reduce the tax base this complaint totally different you've got five steps as the solicitor general's own brief explains before you even get to the reduction in property values each of those are opportunities for intervening causes and all the kinds of things that this court in lexmark said are the reasons why we cut off the liability at the first step now his other answer was to say well look at the congressional report the congressional report identifies that congress was concerned with property values and therefore concerned with cities that congressional report also says congress is equally concerned with employers who suffered from segregated neighborhoods employees who were fired because the neighborhoods suffered from blight and shops in other things so if you take their standard which is look at the congressional report figure out who's harmed by housing discrimination even downstream you would come to the same conclusion we do which is this is an unlimited theory of liability would allow landlords to sue utilities companies to sue and justice sotomayor gardeners to sue we've also said one other thing in justice kagan this gets to your point earlier about the congressional scheme if you adopt on zone of interest their interpretation of agreed persons thirty six twelve allows agreed persons to intervene as a matter of right in federal education our view is what congress did was to empower direct victims to sue as well as some indirect victims and the justice department their interpretation says any city including one that's not even motivated by the same type of you know presumably wonderful motivations of the city of miami can come in intervene in a direct victim's lawsuit and possibly muck it up in any number of directions that can't possibly be what congress thought about when they used the words person aggrieved in the statute to allow cities to come on this this is very important we're not quibbling with that gladstone is absolutely one hundred percent we're not seeking to change it they're the ones who are seeking to expand it in two directions both by taking it out of segregation and by expanding proximate cause to the sky thank you council the case was submitted