it please the court jack winners on behalf of the appellate surance code section one zero one four four of the insurance code of california insurance code is intended to deal with an insurance company's determination to use mental impairments as a basis to limit coverage it does not require an insurance company to offer any particular type of coverage rather what it does is it says if in fact you are offering life or disability insurance or offering an annuity and you wish to use a mental impairment to limit coverage charge a higher price and you think all of those kinds of provisions in california has actually well been health policies we have parity in short term disability policies we now have parity where severe mel mental illness is involved california all those are illegal no i don't think we don't know whether or not they're illegal you have to look at the actual exclusion or a limitation that's involved and you have to see why they give they give unlimited coverage for life annuity or life or disability benefits and we go down if it were what we're primarily dealing with here limit the amount of stamp or kind of coverage available when that happens or the charging jeff or ensure rate for the same coverage soley because of a physical or mental impairment except where the refusal limitation or rate differentiation different issue of the same way we do respect you're on the statute specifically set if the pint of coverage available that's what the statute says if the kind of coverage of the level to an individual for let's say there are in fact two possible constructions of the statute they're both reasonable where do we to whom do we differ if anybody doing make a decision as to which will more easily vote we go to the only decides to you long for an exclusionary provision what it's doing is treating a class of people differently that's what the moat model act is intended to do and that class of people there are being treated differently it does not matter if they're impaired before during or before the policy is issued they become a persistent or after what this provision does it says to insurance companies if for any reason you're going to use a mental or a physical impairment to limit coverage we want you to explain why you're doing it doesn't the model act treat people differently because of this provision unless you can explain why that's what this is if i can just give the court one example imagine that in this situation standard was selling a accident disability policy if you got in an accident and got physically injured you got you you got payments but in that policy they said we're going to exclude or limit the amount of coverage you yet if that accident is contributed in some fashion by a mental impairment bat use of mental impairment or a physical impairment would trigger the second prong of this test we cave i would ask the court i urge the court to look at one zero one four four one zero one four  e it's the statute dealing with blindness blindness does not have the two prong test in the state of california you cannot sell a policy you cannot issue a policy you cannot why the policy that limits coverage because you're blind it's not allowed it is in fact a parity provision one zero one four four is not a parity provision it's asking and telling the insurance companies when in fact you use this provision or use an impairment physical or mental you have to explain why because that is work that is in fact a form of discrimination if there is no justification i see all my promise gone thank you very much your honor there will hear from standard good morning tackle and hearing on behalf of all of the apple e's i think the court's threshold question sort of frames the issue very nicely here there's a clear distinction between a statute such as one o one forty four that's an anti discrimination statute and the parity statutes and that's found in the specific language one hundred one forty four and anti discrimination statutes prohibits specifically identified doc be cause of a mental or physical impairment a parity statute requires a particular congress for severe mental impairment and yet what nelson is arguing in this case is that the failure to provide coverage for both mental and physical equally is a violation of the anti discrimination statute and one who won forty four does not prohibit that conduct if perhaps it's for very specific types of conduct refusal to ensure refusal to continue to ensure limit the coverage of the illegal content of insurance policies and the california legislature within the past few years has passed a statute that specifically regulates disability coverage that needs to be available and it's pacifically chose to limit that requirement to short term policies that are two years or less but this statute itself want to one forty four does not mandate any particular coverage terms and that's  distinction between a discrimination statute and a parity statute discrimination is supposed to be a shield against discriminatory conduct because of someone's disability none of these provisions were added because of miss nelson's disability these are standard provisions that were available to everybody at countrywide paid for one hundred percent by the employer this is simply the coverage that the employer choose to offer for free to all of its employees equally she had exactly the same coverage under exist at exactly the same cost and under exactly the same conditions as everybody else and this court in the wire versus twentieth century fox it considered the same arguments about discrimination in twenty four months limitations in the context of the a d f a and washington statute that prohibited conduct based soley because of disability and the court said that you know if you have these coverage distinctions that are equally a political to all then the access to coverage hasn't been restricted and those types of provisions are not discriminatory it does not violate section want to one forty four counsel in his argument is trying to set up the escape val from the statute the except this except if you have actuarial justification as some sort of gateway you must have actually where he'll justification if you want to do these things and that's not the way the statute is written there must be a violation of the statute before we look at whether the safety valve in the escape hatch apply if the statute itself has not been violated he don't need to worry about whether there's an exception that for no your honor and part of that is again it's it's clear in the in the statutory language this is a statute that's prohibits conduct because of solely because of an individual impairment it doesn't address the content and the california legislature again very recently did address the content and that's required and specifically acknowledged that the insurance commissioner has approved plan that have these twenty four month maximum benefit periods for mental condition commission it's part of only if the court determines that the statute issue is ambiguous and again i don't think it's deference per se but that would be some of the information that the self or any of that would be a california all considered by the california legislature in the recent legislation where they specifically limited the parity requirement to short term disability of twenty four months or less this  forty four has never been interpreted by any court to require parity of coverage based on the terms of the statute that's never been found to be conduct that violates that would require an exception be triggered and instead one of the prohibited conduct was engaged in in this case was no refusal to ensure she obtained the exact same coverage that everybody else did there was no refusal to continue to ensure the coverage remained available to her under the exact same terms as it was available to every other employee a failure thank you there's a star that was there some of