good morning your honors it please the court my name is roberta army hope and i'm here is the lawyer for clay i'm sorry clay shelf the purpose that i'm here today is to ask the court to review the judgment of resulting from the order granting their motion to dismiss the issues in this case are number one weather department of justice exclusion of mr ships in utero physical presence definite designated noun when geographic area as the basis for a denial of this claim is based on a permissible construction of the radiation exposure compensation act and i'm here to whether the district court and this case basically looks at these questions from the standpoint of the chevron case which talks about how we go about determining whether an interpretation of the statute or one is necessary and if so whether the the conclusion is reasonable we contend that yes indeedy part of justice was delegated authority but that the conclusion is not reasonable and therefore the actions by the administration and by the court need to be set aside by now i think that we need to take a look at some of the law dealing with how we go about getting to the determination of this issue  this boils down to a question of how you define the term individual which seems to be at the core of the dispute between the parties i can recognize the  answer by pointing out that the the number one thing that needs to be done in construing the statute is to look at the purpose of the statute the history of the statute what was congress trying to do here and to start from th radiation exposure compensation act had some pretty powerful statements indeed in the preface not to congress admitted detonating atomic bombs in the data had a tremendously adverse effect on down wind up people on people who participated and it also included some information on uranium miners now looking at the history of that i think is what  not and the statute is is silent on that the district court found the regulations are silent now the administration was called upon to have to develop regulations which they did but they did not specifically address this so so here this statute first of all is is has got some powerful statements that to me would seem to to justify in utero recognition but after the powerful medial statements congress had to put black or white but and paper and that regard they develop pretty detail congress dealt things out as and as the part of justices pointed out with some specificity but when you're looking at the onsite participants you're looking at a criteria where the people have to participate to be eligible when you're looking at the uranium miners you're looking at a situation where the people have to have work for a specific period times when you're looking at the question of in utero i'm sorry when you're looking at the question of downwind all that's needed is is about how these cases should be decided in addition looking at the definition itself not the district court found all of the tenants of statutory construction don't point in one direction some may paper what the justice department concluded some with favor what mr sh you well it could in some respects however when you look at some additional things i think that it essentially ends up cutting in my favor if you look at the dictionary act or example now we're talking about whether the the the the question of a reasonable outcome is is correct or not neo j t points to part of that statute and the part they point to is the section that into this question of in of of of what it means to be an individual in the context of the radiation exposure act or downwind hers you come to the conclusion that the individual who would have that right mr scheft the individual whether he was in utero or not in utero you can't distinguish those two so essentially i think that that particular analysis of the  dictionary act supports my position that that it does cover and i'm not sure how mentoring the courts the question fully but another point i'd like to make on that is difference of course is due to the justice department to carry out the statute but not that the difference doesn't extend to their interpretation of the dictionary act which with apply in full to this i think would support our position why well the issue has to do with the interpretation of the statute and i think that when you look at the entire fabric of the statute it supports the notion that there should be a recognition of the in utero physical presence exposure arises if you look at all the cases practically all of them come before the courts in a in an environment that's rich with backs comparison to this case if you're looking  cases if you're looking at environmental cases if you're looking at medicare cases or if you're looking at cases involving immigration issues you've got a lot of regulations that are published here we don't have any regulation on this in addition if you're looking at these other areas you see a history of reported administration decisions over time up court cases here under the uncontroverted facts as they may apply to the issue of statutory construction and as applied to the difference it's admitted that all of the decisions that were made we don't know if it's one five ten hundred have never been publicly published because of issues of the congress on notice about the fact that there was a history of denying claims of this nature when the when when the congress commissioned a report on this there was a  berkeley on behalf of the department of justice with regard to congress to create a streamlined payment program for three groups of individuals individuals who are physically present in certain geographic areas for certain  was any kind of a sort of full sort of discussion or sort of particularly definitive legislative history i will say that in the mid ninety's there was a report it's called the bureau's report the biological impact the biological  rita in two thousand so the tripper came out in the ninety's not in two thousand congress expanded the geographical requirement in various disease requirements reka but it did not do anything with respect to the  the principle of statutory interpretation goes to the question of congress let alone because it was aware that this was the state of the law were changed because that was where this is a good law but if there's no published history of that longstanding interpretation then it's congress would have heard about it for constituents and a town hall meeting for not sort of thing but there was nothing in the record the point of our argument about the longstanding interpretation is just that you know i don't think there's any rule that you only consider the fact that a interpretation is longstanding when present in certain places at certain times the was physically present at other points in time or c participated on it and there's a separate provision that refers to individuals who were employed in uranium mines and we do think that sort of  especially even if there is some ambiguity on this point we certainly don't think that it's entirely clear from the statute that it would have intended to cover those other groups and i said i hear you abandoning your plain meaning argument i need at just looking are you just making the argument that congress used the term individual that was in visioning individuals who could do these things right and that kind of focusing on that provision but are there other traditional tool statutory interpretation the way that congress has approached this question in similar statutes and in similar statutes congresses expressly provided coverage for the exposed for example if you have a room uranium mine or or somebody who has been exposed to physically exposed to radiation from atomic testing or whatever i'll try to be very brief in my rebuttal remarks in regard to the difference in this case it's different from most of the cases because there really isn't a fact rich background to see how the the different should be applied there simply isn't anything secondly when you come to the two thousand i've before if you concede ok congress was told there has not been any reenactments  time furthermore when the spattering of no one has brought any of that up after that time and why would congress somebody born a little before this third time be treated differently when they get older like m