ignored please the court my name is rachel miller's a glare and i represent petitioners w m d c and they p v petitioners are entitled to feel under the equal access to justice act because they obtained a total victory challenging a reasonable government i'd like to focus my time today on the only two contested issues in this case first substantial justification it's the government's burden to show that its position was substantially justified both at the agency level and before this court here the government hasn't even attempted to defend the bulk of the b i's decision below nor is it offered any defense of its litigation posture in this court the second issue in dispute is a reasonable notice of the fees requested petitioners obtained an excellent result in this case they got a completely manned which is the maximum alif that this court could reasonably grant petitioners counsel treated this case to just like they would a paying client they employed the same billing judgement did the same work and submitted the same billing records and the government hasn't disputed the petitioners or prevailing parties or that any of the other prerequisites for fees have been met petitioners are accordingly entitled to a full ward of their request at the beginning w substantial justification as i said it's a governance burden to make this showing and it has to show that its position was substantially justified at all stages of the litigation excuse me of the case here the government has fallen far short of meeting that burden circuit has a better the better view that when there is a case dispositive issue that if the government lost that issue it would lose the entire case and the government can't come up with any reasonable basis in defense of what it did on that issue then it would fail to show substantial justification that said we think we went under any and any potential test under the test the majority of us are gets past the looks to this sort of predominance holistic inquiry w win under that test because the government hasn't shown substantial justification one has even offered it offensive in terms of substantial justification on the bulk of the issues looking to those specific errors the most obvious errors in the b i's decision are on the sexual orientation claim and the heiress e g clip on sexual orientation w m d c's claim was that she feared future persecution from society broadly on account of her perceived sexual orientation now rather than respond to that the b i a rejected the claim by looking into the past persecution of a single individual that was non responsive to the legal crux of the claim and non responsive to the factual evidence that petitioners have put forth in support of it on the air c g claim v i am fond in total the immigration judges nexus analysis and for the reasons we explained more thoroughly in our opening brief that nexus analysis was simply untouchable for example it concluded  regularly declared her love for v c and that in joke insisted that they raise w b c as child together as their child those holdings have no basis in law or fact much less a reasonable basis as would be required for substantial justification and we think perhaps the best evidence of that fact is that the government hasn't attempted to argue otherwise the government has offered no defense of the sexual orientation of clothing holding or the air c g hold and it's the opposition it essentially concedes that the sexual orientation claim lack substantial justification and on the air c g claim it does try to defend what the b a a does did it says that the b a acted reasonably in holding that air g shouldn't be extended to unmarried same sex couples the problem for the government is that that's not what to be held to be a clearly affirmed only the nexus analysis that the immigration judge made it did not decide on grounds related to the scope of their c g accordingly the government hasn't tried to defend two out of the three holdings that the b i made and it's that lack of defense makes this case fairly easy for a substantial justification the united states government obviously has strong institutional interest in defending agency judgments that are favorable to it and here rather than try to defend what the b i did it simply essentially thrown in the towel twice it could have defended the b i's decision below by filing a response or if it decided not to have decided to see go amanda instead and again could have defended what the b i a did in its fees opposition and for the reasons i've explained it failed to do and the fact that the government would rather send this case back to the b i a than try to defend it before this court is powerful evidence that the government couldn't come up with any reasonable basis for defending what the b i did that there was reasonable arguments in defense of that emetic therefore lacked substantial justification because because the government's position lock substantial justification petitioners are entitled to fees under the boxes to justice act the acts as a court and they got a remand actually on more than that they got a remand on all issues that had been raised before the b i the supreme court hensley has said that reasonable excuse me that the touchstone of reasonableness for a fee a ward is the job results that petitioners obtained what sort of relief they got and here petitioners got everything they asked for and everything that they could reasonably get under n s t ventura and as to the interest says the courts generally can only remain and back to  on one out of three issues the sexual orientation claim with respect to the government that's simply not correct the this court granted the government's motion for a man without amendment and the government's motion for  asked for a remained to allow the v a to reconsider issues quote including but not limited to and quote the sexual orientation claim it is difficult to imagine a clear language on the fact that this was not limited to the amount of any fees in other words in the abstract it's entirely possible for the government to lose on every claim in a given hypothetical case and still have had reasonable justification for its position so yes your honor and if the government had shown that it was substantially justified in your honor is entirely right we wouldn't be entitled to any fees much less reasonable fees but here the substantial the government hasn't shown substantial justification and now the supreme court has said that the substantial justification inquiry is a one time threshold question that's remind us of you jean the government's position either is or is not substantially justified it would be inappropriate for courts to look to the amount of substantial justification in determining the amount of the feel ward that those supreme court's decision and gene clearly holds as much and this court has also held in for example russell the national mediation board that even if the government's litigation position is reasonable if what happened at the agency isn't reasonable then a few applicant is entitle to full fees that it's not proper to reduce a field ward by the amount that was substantially justified here the government hasn't shown substantial justification so petitioners get their full reasonable fees reasonable nest look to the amount of relief and as i've explained that relief was total now the government has presented various arguments as to why this court should reduce petitioners fee use whittle them down in various ways i'm happy to discuss any of those with the court but for the reasons we splaying in our reply we don't think any of them have merit petitioners treated this case like just like we would have any other non fee shifting case we submitted the same billing records and did the same scope of work as we would for paying client and nothing more is required i'd like to just note that the government hasn't made any prevailing party argument for the reasons that we explained in our fee application we think the prevailing party question is clearly answered by the supreme court's decision in  please this court my name is andrew over on behalf of the respondent the attorney general william people our government believes that petitions are not entitled to attorney fees because the government's position was substantially justified and the fees requested  circuit and if there are no further questions we believe that the government's response fully addresses petitioners  cases are under submission