section two o two h of a telecommunications act of one thousand nine hundred and ninety six reflects congress's conclusion that in light of intervening competitive developments broadcast cross ownership restrictions adopted in an earlier era may no longer be warranted to ensure that such restrictions do not remain in force simply through inertia congress required the f c c to re examine those rules every four years and to repeal or modify any rules that no longer serve the public interest after reconsidering its ownership rules in accordance with section two hundred and two a just mandate the f c c determined in two thousand and seventeen that its newspaper broadcast and radio television rip rules should be repealed entirely and its local television rules should be relaxed the commission explained that the profusion of new media outlets particularly through cable and the internet alleviated the viewpoint diversity concerns that had originally justified the restrictions it further found that the rules to serve the public interest by preventing economically efficient combinations that would provide consumers better broadcast service the court of appeal did not find fault with that analysis indeed the court in two thousand and four had sustained the f c c used determination that the blanket newspaper broadcast across ownership by and no longer serve the public interest the court nevertheless vacated the f c c is rule changes on the ground that the agency had not adequately assessed the changes will likely affect on minority and female ownership levels the court elevation of that single factor has no basis in the governing statute and the court failed to show adequate respect for the agency's predictive judge much and its balancing of competing policy objectives that the circus judgment should be reversed mr stewart or was the f c c required to consider the impact on minority and female ownership in the two thousand and seventeen reconsideration order we don't think anything in the statute required the f c c to consider after the court of appeals in what we refer to as promethea story it's prior decision in this line of cases had included a footnote that directed the f c c when it next reevaluated its cross ownership rules to consider that yet historically when the commission has adopted across ownership rules of various stores it has been to promote a viewpoint diversity and localism to ensure that there is as much of a plethora as possible of distinct voices within the local community and it is not historically taken into account impacts on minority and female ownership in conducting that analysis and again nothing in two thousand and twenty eight would have required the commission to start doing that quadrennial review what scrutiny would apply when the commission simply shifts a priority let's say that their work was a consideration of female minority ownership and the cross ownership rules and it just decided well we think the latter is more important than the former so we're going to focus solely on the on the latter i think it's really been a rational basis review that is it the f c c had decided to adopt an explicitly race or gender conscious standard that is give a preference to members of racial minorities or to women as such that it would be required to satisfy a heightened scrutiny but i think you know counsel justice thomas thank you mr chief justice mrs stewart you indicate that the landscape in the area viewpoint diversity has changed over the years could you talk a bit about that particularly interested in particularly and the  effect mentioned in your brief and some of the others with as a result of some of the new internet based platforms i think the idea is that when the rules were st adopted in many local communities there might be three broadcast stations and one local newspaper and basically four independent voices within the community providing local news coverage and other forms of coverage and if two of those outlets were owned by the same entity that would be a substantial diminution in potential viewpoint diversity now when you have a plethora of internet based platforms cable stations that can also provide local news coverage the reduction in viewpoints within the broadcast fear specifically is not going to be nearly so significant in light of the preview profusion of different viewpoints that will be available to the consumer so do you have any sort of structural  program of requirements such as we have here is specific to these alternative platforms really we really are not talking in this case about regulation of the internet or regulation of cable i think the justification for enhanced regulation of the broadcast media has always been that the broadcast spectrum is scarce not as many people can broadcast  frequencies as would like to and therefore it's necessary to have a federal agency that allocates the spectrum and decides how it can best be used to serve the public interest and there is at the same sort of need with respect to cable and the internet because one person's voice doesn't crowd out another's thank you just as brian i'm thinking of and so they as a the anti merger part smaller firms and here smaller firms are heavily correlated or more likely to be correlated with women and minorities quite the opposite view which is what the s c f c c is now chosen  is they want to move or allowed to be moved towards more concentration so what's the theory but that wouldn't hurt the minorities and women or smaller businesses what's the theory  c has devised other programs like the incubate or program in the eligibility eligible entity definition that are intended to give certain regulatory advantages to small and to date and these may in those rules may incidentally benefit the mail and minority owners or prospective owners even though they're not limited to those people at the nd thing is the theory behind what the f c c did was in part the data don't show it but in part with respect to some of these rules the intuition really is that they are one to one pack things for example with respect to the newspaper broadcast across ownership rule the rule that a single entity can't own both a newspaper and earlier that the commission was not required by the statute to consider minority and female ownership but the commission did that and therefore we were reversed the court of appeals on the grounds that the commission simply wasn't required to consider this factor at all and does it matter that the panel had previously indicated that the commission had to consider that factor i think if you concluded that the statute actually barred the commission from considering that fact or you could reverse the court of appeals on that basis i think if you simply concluded that the commission was either allowed to do it or not as it shows you might think that you need to analyze the commission's assessment of that factor at least a little bit in light of the fire but the commission analyzed it but even the court of appeals didn't say that the commission ignored the weight of the data or that the data affirmatively demonstrated that the mail in minority ownership levels would be reduced it simply said the commission has a amassed enough data to reach an informed conclusion one way or the other and we think that was agency might be required to analyze data that quote can be readily obtained there's a big gap between those two polls where should we draw the line i don't i think here it's not a matter of the data could readily be obtained that is the deficiencies in the data don't result from the agency's current data collection practices what the agency was trying to do was assess the potential consequences of relaxing the ownership rules by looking at arguably consideration of it is in the public interest and i don't see anything in the ruling below that was subject to review by the circuit that said otherwise it may have said that he didn't think the changes would fact that issue it said other things but i don't think the f c c has ever disavowed that that consideration of that factor should be given in its review the agency has never has frequently said that this is a factor that make it be taken into account in its public and interest analysis just right so maintain let's stop there that's exactly what it said and i saw the circuit court saying that's what you said but your consideration was in adequate because you really didn't you didn't explain it and we have a legion of click adequately explain it we have a legion of cases that say you don't have to rule in favor of one point of view or another but when you're rejecting something you should give it adequate consideration isn't that what we're judging i think there are two things i would say about that the  although the agency has historically looked at and have to be male and minority ownership as a goal to be achieved through song means it has not historically looked at that criterion as a basis for it across  ownership restrictions and adopting those restrictions it's what other doctors the nd thing is that the court of appeals chided the agency not we're conducting an adequate analysis of the data that were available but for having inadequate data and i think we've television cross ownership in that era the rules were justified by considerations of viewpoint diversity but what the commission was it's better to have more independent outlets in the community really understanding you mr stewart so i just ask even your brief you say the agency has traditionally treated this form of broadcast diversity meaning minority and female ownership as an element in its multi factor public interest if you look at this in this rule making were you saying look we don't think that the changes in these rules will affect the mail in minority ownership or were you saying something more like we don't have evidence of this and we're not going to let speculative arguments get in the way of what we want to do otherwise we were saying the evidence is fragmentary but based on the evidence we have our best is there will not be a substantial of that and the mere a possibility that there could be such an effect is not a sufficient basis for forwarding a regulatory changes that we would otherwise deem to be very desirable  good morning mr stewart the parties dispute the propriety of the rd circuit holding on to this case and all of its various iterations for the last i don't know seventeen or so years i'm curious what the government's position on that is in in succeeding stages of this litigation there have been petitions for review filed in other circuits and there have been been requests to transfer the cases to the rd circuit the government in the past has not opposed those requests i think we're a little skeptical of that the rd circuit repeated statement that it is retaining jurisdiction and really have the operative legal effect that is if the next time around a petition for review  filed in some other circuit that would otherwise be an appropriate venue that circuit can decide for itself whether to transfer the case to the rd circuit but we don't think that that circuit would be under an obligation to do so simply because the rd circuit has sure i'm clear under the statute and the public interest standard does the f c c have to consider the effect of relaxing the rules on women in minority ownership no we don't believe so  interest consideration that could be taken into account in making other sorts of decisions doesn't mean that we have to consider it in making every single regulatory decision we make including relaxation of the cross ownership rules do you agree that the f c c did consider it here to consider and if the f c c had concluded there was likely to be an adverse impact on female and minority ownership it would then have had to decide how do we balance that against the identified benefits it never got to that point having considered it doesn't the f c c have to justify how and considering i think them at the very most you could say that the f c c has to do is provide a reasonable not necessarily of view that the court deems carette but a reasonable view of the evidence that is before it it doesn't have to amass additional evidence simply to be able to pronounce with a higher degree of confidence  and follow up on justice priors question what's the theory for why it wouldn't hire women and minority ownership to syria he asked can you continue your answer there yes with respect to newspaper broad press cross ownership for instance the commission found that though the most likely consequence of eliminating the ban is that broadcast stations will buy newspapers rather than the reverse because the newspaper industry is in such trouble and if a broadcaster does station buys a newspaper that doesn't affect any form of centralization or consolidation of ownership within the broadcast industry that the existing broadcast owners remain the same it's just one of them has bought a newspaper and that may allow it to achieve economies of scale and provide or to be conceding that the f c c had long taken on minority and women ownership into account but then you have added a little bit and said that it took into account because the rd circuit's opinion required it too  wasn't entirely clear which position you had settled on so could you clarify that for me i think what i meant to say was it has long identified a minority and female ownership of an increase in ownership levels or a decrease in the  current under representation as a good that would serve the public interest it has not historically taken that particular public interest factor into account in determining whether particular cross ownership restrictions specifically should adopted or retained for example of the chief attempts to achieve that goal through other means such as preferences through small businesses that are race or gender neutral but may incidentally help minority and female owners owners  elapses do you see a difference between a stated goal of enhancing minority and female ownership and not harming minority and female ownership and if so which is the f c c i think it is both i think the f c c would be cognizant of either argument again outside the context of either of the arguments that an existing regulatory change is good because it will increase minority and female ownership levels or a proposed regulatory change is bad because it would decrease then i think the f c c would be open to either form of argument and again what we're talking about is race and sex neutral analysis is undisputed the f c c concluded that because of a variety of alternative media voices are now available to consumers the viewpoint diversity concerns that originally prompted the cross ownership rules were far less acute today the f c c also explained that if the ownership restrictions were repealed or relaxed owners could achieve economies of scale for instance a broadcast station by buying a local newspaper could use resources with respect to the gathering and the dissemination of local news on both platforms and it could thereby provide better broadcast service to its consumers by using the resources of the newspaper  you counsel miss walker thank you mr chief justice may please the court in this case the f c c decided the broadcasters should not have to operate under ownership restrictions dating back to the roosevelt administration i'd like to focus on the statutory reasons why that was lawful so two too late was meant to drive real reform with a focus on competition here the commission statutorily required findings that the rules are no longer in the public interest as a result of competition are on challenged yet the rd circuit vacated the water because the pension failed to adequately said are a minority in female ownership this statute does not say one word about that issue and the a p a does not require the f c c to consider it either the upheld on that ground i welcome the court's question was water are you saying that it would have been arbitrary and capricious for the commission to consider the impact on minority and female ownership no but it decided for instance that the newspaper broadcasts under his rule was no longer in the public interest and had to be repealed before it even got to the minority and being out ownership discussion well given that the commission had considered minority and female ownership for some time was entered under some obligation under state farm for example to explain why it was not focusing or even weighing that interest in the tw alluded to that as a policy but never and the context of these rules in fact they just said the opposite that these rules aren't an appropriate vehicle because they don't really work to promote minority and gain a ownership of that in a two thousand and fourteen review and the on the question of what the commission had to sparkly done not inconsistent we're just being more specific to say that policy has never been advanced with respect to the ownership limits and i heard mr stewart say this morning that he agrees with that we would like the court to resolve this case on statutory grounds and not really decide that the for traditional public interest rationales for these rules here on our viewpoint diversity localism and competition those three rationales underlie the adoption of the role on the commission has consistently relied on those we think those yes your honor and i think i think your question draws out the fact that broadcasters competitors all these new platforms all these new social media formats are completely unregulated get broadcasters labor under these rules that literally go back to the newspaper they're all in the business of providing news they're all somewhat competitive and we want to stop them from being concentrated so we have our rules and one thing about those rules one thing only is that they will not hurt small businesses they will tend to help small businesses that are more easily and small businesses tend to be correlated with women and minorities now we have a change and the change seems to be we don't see any effect ok  normally when an agency changes its rules it has to explain why just a question of explaining it well that's the same question i asked before  effect on small businesses in fact it's positive and looking at the public interest generally there is no negative and it's a positive for women and minorities women change well ok where the explanations are i don't think the commission for said what you are hypothesized they have never said even in two thousand and sixteen order that predated the reconsideration order that the rules would help those structural ownership rules it's important that we've used to suspect that that would help small businesses new entrants minorities and women by the correlation they did say that with respect to the diversity order that those thirty got any explanation throughout but the two thousand and sixteen order that predated the order on review actually never said that the ownership limits what advance the interest entrants justice alito to paint a picture of what this case means in real world real world terms can you give me a concrete for example justice alito a local broadcaster might buy a failing newspaper that would be a very good thing as the record shows and many of our own making explain to newspapers have been in a downward spiral for decades a local broadcasters could buy that newspaper help get it back up and running and be providing more local news and more local content for their communities that would be an excellent thing that would not be allowed to happen if the rd circuit is not reversed and on that point justice alito if i might it's important to note that responded has not even challenge the commission statutorily required competitive  because there really is no serious argument that these will still are necessary or is that a realistic possibility can you point to a real world example of a local or a local television station buying a fairly new state for him keeping your business i believe the amicus brief the illyas lays out in detail a lot of examples where television stations have been able to do that or buy another television station in the same market pool reinforces and create more local programming very refer you to those and you get free but does the lido and other real world point is that for instance amazon gets the washington post today nobody think that's the going over close to fifty years scratch thickly you're encouraging us not to look at what might be a simple issue which is was the explanation given adequate  i don't know what why either you or the solicitor general need to deal that far could you explain to me if there's a simpler reason why we should go to the more complex reason well i actually think the statutory reason is not as complex but i'll get to that the reason why we need the broadcasters are asking for statutory rebate because it took a seventeen years to get to this court seventeen years of litigation to the rd circuit sure stiction up until this moment meaning at every moment in which there had been a name a motion to transfer the case the government agreed to it a port inappropriate for a circuit to retain jurisdiction in a complex case don't think you need to draw a hard line but here with clear a way outside of anything appropriate one handle of the rd circuit has retained jurisdiction for the f c c has always thought as of one factor not the only factor obviously but one factor is minority in female ownership and further like you to assume and i understand that you can test this as a factual matter but i just want you to assume that with me now that that historic practice has been true in the two hundred and two h context as well as in rome making or license giving or anything else that the that actually would preclude consideration of that factor here even if the commission wanted to i draw your attention to our statutory theory which is a public interest here have to be patent in some way and so we read the statute  basis i would have thought perhaps a wins a win from your client's perspective and i would like to understand why that's not case well as a practical matter just of course that the court doesn't clarify what the statute requires  ownership restrictions congress everything or something in between that you doesn't just say the public interest it says the public interest as a result of competition we've offered a reading that has that anchors it in the purpose of the statute which is regulatory reform this is determine whether any of the rules are necessary in the public interest as a result of competition the nd sentence tells the commission what to do if it makes that determination that certain rules are no longer necessary if it makes that determination it has to repeal or modify them so the determination referenced in the nd sentence is the same determination referenced in the st sentence so they can actually link to each other and it would have been pedantry for congress to have to interpret to encompass of tax on women and minority ownership i think it could but it never did that here and so the rd circuit was wrong to say that that was a requirement under state farm and if it is a free standing public interest standard justice cavanagh i think that raises nanda elevation problems we've offered a reading that has the public interest to the task and the unique context of this particular statute and n b c says we have to pay attention to statutory context here and the tax the context of the purpose of this entire statute all point in the direction that congress must this to be a vehicle for deregulation not more regulation  breyer on this welfare given that congress wanted the statute to be a vehicle for deregulation not more regulation is it your position that the word modify and to go to h when it requires the commission to modify or repeal as part of then let's talk about the public interest and how it might affect repeal or modification of a rule let's imagine that the commission finds that a rule no longer promotes competition but believes the role promoted to viewpoint diversity and localism and that event as it your position that to a to age requires the f c c to repeal or modify the rule no the commission gets to balance the traditional public interest factors on our reading of what the public interest means those read it carefully you'll see that the commission had already made the public interest determination required by the st sentence by the time it got to the discussion of minority and being male ownership of staff point the commission had no choice but to repeal or modify the barely changed that is not what congress had in mind and it took us as i mentioned seventeen years of litigation to get to this court now that we are here we respectfully ask the court to provide guidance on what the statute does and does not require abs guidance we're going to be stuffed most likely in the same morass in the very next review in congress's intent could be supported for another twenty five years we've got to respectfully ask that you clear the way for the statute to finally operate as intended as a mechanism meaningful reform with a focus come on competition that does not allow a textual factors to trump the conditions expressly required competitive findings which again are here completely challenged for the reasons we asked the court to reverse agency engaged in reasoned decision making the government agrees that promoting broadcast ownership by women and people of color has long been the commission's own public interest calls one that is fully consistent with the review the problem here is that the reconsideration order fails this basic requirement of administrators accountability baseband zero information about female ownership and  nonsensical analysis of badly flawed data on minority ownership the agency repeated reassuring the public that consolidation would do no harm to either the government now asked for  and said that the uncertainty with this knowledge prediction is hard and it are used essentially that because no harm was shouted there was nothing to be waved that because the no harm binding here were whol arbitrary to defer to record it would only encourage agencies to do sloppy work to avoid making tough choices ultimately if the commission i think gives less weight and ownership diversity or your questions counsel let's let's say the commission there are sort of two different priorities you know priority a priority b and the commission is going  along focusing on priority b and then i mean there's a change in the commission membership or whatever and the commission says we're not going to we're now going to focus on a nothing to change in the policy goal of promoting minority female ownership and there were repeated assurances that the deregulatory measures going forward without harm that call and good enough is enough for the agency to say  well you may have noticed we're no longer talking about b we're talking about a and the reason news we think is more important than b is that enough i don't believe that your honor i think they would minority and female ownership those are two different things no matter what the harm to this other longstanding policy call which we have said on many occasions that our brother had other ships little's are to promote and i would point you to j f k thirty five and also the two thousand and two order cited on thirty two of the never if they could say no matter the harm to this this school it's really hard to measure it's too uncertain and we're willing to go forward for these other public interest goals because they are more important but they did not say that here well if if there are their action focuses on a different set of priorities in other words you seem to be suggesting that as a matter of policy as opposed to what the record shows about a particular priority they have to justify a determination that a is more important than b when reasonable people can di they can't they can't just say you know yes this isn't him but female in the north the ownership is a very important thing but so is cross ownership and we can only you know as i said we don't have resources to devote to both and we're going to focus on cross ownership i think they would also have to say that we're willing to do that no matter the hire to something that we have repeatedly said is one of the goals of the drill what is the basis for the rd circuit's ruling rule that predated section two a to age the commission recognized that the potential for increased prices relaxing ownership limits and a concern considering the ability of minorities and women and committed to studying the effects of that j a m a two thousand to order i guess is where i would go next that's the nab raif at age thirty two commissioned stated how he had quote had historically used the ownership rules to foster ownership by diverse groups such as minorities women and small businesses and a three thousand three  five the commission again that has a long history of promoting rules and regulations intending to promote diversity of ownership among broadcast licensees including minor already in female ownership o businesses and as explained above the commission's broadcast ownership rules help for this purpose so while they're not targeted measures they create the underlying structural and i have many other examples but those are those are the about fostering diversity by historically under represented bridge both as a freestanding interest in terms of having fair and equitable allocation of the scarce broadcast spectrum and one that is intertwined in support the other would be fine but that simply didn't happen here weighing whatsoever justice prior we read the briefs on the all this other than amicus brief that explains economically speaking why they want to get rid of the rules is a combination of failing company argument economies of scale so they have that before them the f c c didn't say there are a band name the minority women policy they didn't say that or the small business policy what they said is there's no evidence in this record to convince us that if we do these kinds of briefs that it will hurt our efforts there and besides we have two new things called incubator and we have something called and we're trying to preserve and encourage minority and women ownership way ok what's wrong with that and you heard me out the other side are they changing their policy and the other side says no no there's brief that has nothing on women and as for the minority data the american statistical association is here telling you that it is worse than doing no analysis at all to drew's draw the conclusion that they  numbers and then having ignored the results of that study that at least attempted to do a more reasoned analysis of the exact same question that the f t c purported to analyse analyze in that list a is is a little bit like throwing stones from glass houses for the agency now to be here saying that the free press study had its own problems and so you know i think i don't think you're disputing that the agency gets to decide how important things minority and female ownership use in the context of any group in rule making and i don't think the agency has changed its position that its ownership rules are not primarily intended to promote minority and female ownership so how do we reconcile that with your position i think it be to see whether it cautioned against the consolidation it wanted to go forward with you know we disagree that that that you know that there was no harm to be found on this record they did be taken into account in decision making like this but as i understand what the government has done the smore ning is to say that we that they don't agree with you i mean this is unlike in their briefs but an argument the government said well with respect to two hundred and two age determinations we've never taken into account female and minority ownership and justice thomas asked you a similar question but i just wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to respond to that assertion of the governments that it had historically not taken female and minority ownership into account in the two hundred and two h context specifically i didn't i  stewart i agree that it hasn't been the only factor or a primary factor but to the extent that mr stewart was saying that it has never been considered as a factor i think that just not consistent with history and then when i have to say i'm really given you an opportunity to tell me what to look to to decide whether you are mr stuart is right on the question and he did so again i was of diversity which include minority and female on a ship is one golf and says and this is at eighteen the f c c are at thirteen c is six hundred and thirty for encouraging minority and female ownership historically has been an important commission objective and we are for that goal here and then again j three hundred and thirty five talks about how the commission broadcast ownership role help further this purpose of promoting minority and female ownership to mislead supposed that's right and the commission has historically considered this as as as one factor in its broader public interest analysis but here the commission says something along the lines of look there's actually not a lot of data about how this rule will assess to minority and female ownership to the extent that we have data we think that's it shows that it won't have an collect data and analyze this problem which as i said goes back to the nine hundred and ninety five dollars t v rule but understanding that the commission has a free standing obligation to go out and collect data itself with respect to this commission can't rely on the notice and comment process to to to provide it with data the commission has its own data already that collects in the form of three hundred and twenty three verses and now i'm not saying that i think what was wrong with s and we have nine hundred and seventy rules governing cross ownership still today and the one thing we know about the ninety six act is that it had the regulatory impulse and yet that impulse has never been exercise years ago twenty five years ago congress said were outdated and when when is the f c c going to be able to try an experiment and if it says in its best considered judgment after multiple rounds of  multiple rounds of data collection and public comment that it earnestly believes that these rules are going to negatively impact anyone and mine actually affirmatively benefit most people when exactly overall for example are out apart from the two or two age process and nothing in people that they can't there's no experiment now and see what happens i think reasonable reading of to into an age which requires the agency to as as competition has changed whether the rules are necessary and the public interest at that moment isn't a license to move forward no matter the harm to one of your own public interest goals and then you know sort it out but one authority is there for the rd circuit to have retained restriction over not one rule making but now over the course of fifteen years it does seem a little unusual in its duration and  modify that ruling to the extent that it sees fit you know we but it doesn't undermine the core problem here which is the arbitrariness of the reconsideration order and on that basis reaction one way to look at this from courts obviously review agency legal interpretations to make sure the agency is not departing from the law now acted by congress and on that front reviewing the law  review is is usually pretty tight pretty stringent putting aside and whether there's an ambiguity in the law on the other hand and critically federal courts do not make the policy calls we defer to agency policy judgments within the constraints imposed by congress and here it's the broadest possible language that congress uses public interest on much of a constraint at all prague in this walker to the agency's policy judgments and there's a lot of case law as you know in the f c c contacts justice white's opinion for the court and the w n c and case that predictive judgments made by the you know a p a one o one but here there's no reason and judgement to defer to there is nothing there and when you know the data and no explanation even or attempt to explain why the no harm finding to one of the early reviews where the commission itself represents recognize the drop in minority and female ownership after the consolidation in the late think i'm not sure that in the record you know i think to the extent you want to take account of what's happening after this record has closed there's a much easier path forward which is to affirm the rd circuit and last the already delayed two thousand and eighteen review move forward including analyzing the results of the incentive auction which is another area where the data indicated that women and people of backward looking so for example on page thirty nine of your brief you talk about how it's strange being concluded at the nih one hundred and ninety dollars s television rule changes contributed to the loss of forty percent of the previously minority owned stations was it entirely backward looking looking at the facts of oil changes in the past or did have a predictive component the trend analysis was backward looking just like the government's analysis of the numbers was just did it better by using better numbers that were corrected for the problems in trading but as i said they also did cross sectional analysis so taking a snapshot in time showing that the more consolidated the market the less likely there were to be women and people of color or owners and so to be sure that i understand that you're saying that they did make a predictive judgment and offered predictive analysis like if you make this change then this is the likelihood that its own numbers even if you know without any correction showed that there was harm for past consolidation and there's no reason to think that that wouldn't happen for the future plus as i said government had no evidence at all on the record about the effect on women ownership as opposed to the minority evidence which you say that it ignored but if there's no statistical evidence then i hear you saying you're talking about the backward looking free press study you're talking about interviews is there anything in the record that's actually a statistical analysis that shows the likely impact of these changes on the relevant minority and women community and the sources that mention oh thank you counsel i don't have any other questions thank you your honor i have three points i'll try to go fast minority and female ownership i just want to reiterate has long been baked into the public interest standard in this context i frenchies some of the  quote industries petitioners are up against the government former commissioners and history and contending otherwise nd the government agrees that original weighing of all public interest calls that they have defined in this context is necessary and that simply didn't happen here on this record there's no reason predictive judgment to defer to on gender or on minority on ownership trends and the agency didn't make much less attempt to explain its decision to deregulate no matter the harm to tell in public interest call and just the opposite there are unfounded statements that permeate the reconsideration order about how the rule repeals will have no material  will not likely harm minority and female ownership and although they talk a lot about the newspaper broadcast across ownership role for the local t v changes for example that is the only evidence that they rely on for no harm is this listing of numbers on page thirty seven of our pre finally i would note that the remedial concerned don't under have the rd circuit court conclusion here that the commission undertook dramatic regulatory repeal without reasonably considering an questions afresh in a two thousand and eighteen review where it can analyze the better to data including the ready for results of the incentive auction to reach a reasoned decision on whether directly elation is actually in the public interest for these ownership of data on the cross ownership rules my primary point is that when those rules were st adopted they were adopted for reasons other than their potential effects on minority and female ownership and so the commission in deciding whether to retain those rules aren't as naturally focused on whether the original justification continued to apply now in the era post nine hundred and ninety six the enactment of the two section two hundred and two age you can find documents that list basically the full d range of public interest considerations as potentially relevant to the two o two a tribute but i'm not aware of any instance even under section two hundred and two age in which the f c c has actually amended repealed or retained the process ownership rules for the stated reason of its impact on minority and female ownership it just historically either before or after nine hundred and ninety six has not been a factor that has animated the commission's decision with respect to the ownership rule nd i think the most straightforward pass to decide the case is to follow the one that the connect commission itself laid out in the reconsideration order it said the historical reasons for the cross ownership rules no longer apply allowing cross ownership will likely benefit consumers acknowledge that incomplete data left uncertainty as to the likely effects of repeal and amendment on women and minorities but the agencies best estimate was that there would be no harm and that they are possibility of harm was not and it was not a sufficient grounds for foregoing changes that the agency otherwise considered highly beneficial the court has said numerous times that it will quote uphold a decision of less than they remained in place it was because the commission had re examined them and had made a fresh determination that they continued to serve the public interest and the rd circuit's approach really torques that if the crossover showed the amendment had been allowed to go into effect into effect in the earlier year of we will now have more data on the potential effects of those rule changes on minority and women the at the effect of the court of appeals decision is that the periodic review process can be derailed who identified possible countervailing effects and insist that the agency perform new research before it can amend the rules that are already in place that has to have the very effect that congress attempted to forestall in requiring product under any or