burns for the petitioner on assisted by ritually he was from the boat on the return of this argument the fundamental function of this court is twofold when it comes to federal employment to ensure clarity of federal employment law  shore fairness in the decision making both for the parties and particular in this case for the petitioner in this particular action neither were were honored by the judge and therefore we come to this court with an appeal but you have a cl speeding tickets in a foreign country and he was the motor than suspended not removed and these these  that's one of the issues yeah but they weren't all speeding now some of them were if you feel you steal one was a minor bumping accident where somebody parked the rear ended somebody or parking but there was only one parking violation and there was one parking violation there these weren't speed the only speed there were no one of the problems with the idea of the fifteen in the speeding in the outrageous of the conduct is there's a couple problems there st of all there are only seven tickets that were charged and not all of them were speeding most of them are off base only one involved more than twenty miles over the speeding limit and not ended with a reckless driving charge none had an injury not had intoxication so these are the type of sort of traffic infractions that while there is some frequency to them certainly that many of us earn over the course of time and so therefore they're a nurse we put in our brief they're not disciplinary actions one does not get disciplined for an off base failure to yield one does not get disciplined for off base conduct what would happen here is that if your client f installation in japan where he was transiting out three weeks later when he originally went to this hearing as you can see from the form it's appendix one thousand one hundred and forty seven the only going to happen is you peered before a navy chief and asked him if he had these items and he said yes and they said and they told him you were going to have your your your japan based opportunity suspended to him that was about three weeks time he was transiting out the n c a a s itself didn't even understand whether or not that would apply to the united states and the  respond whenever and you have the emergency equipment to do so the n c s that's not required it does not require you to drive your car to work most of the people that went where my client was stationed here in the us went to the pentagon which i think we can take judicial notice of has an actual metro station so he was not required to bring his vehicle does he have or he had a virginia driver's like yes or yes that virginia like driver's license ballot are on basis or for driving  overseas the virginia driver's license would give him the opportunity to drive the restriction would be that once he reached the post itself he would not be authorized to bring that vehicle on if its license was in suspension for the d o d installation so technically speaking he could not that would apply to restricting him to enter the base or not that was not an issue that was raised was not an issue has discussed the and i think the important thing for the court is to recognise this i'm not quite sure why he was punished was he punished for the revocation and was punished for the the tickets because the court never made that clear and so we have a we have to are going to have a nexus and a notice argument on the nexus yes losing your license to drive for a year on a military base is certainly embarrassing but this individual was not required to have that d o t license and he was not required to operate a vehicle on the base there is no proof showing from the government which is has the burden of a stab in the noticed that he was required to bring this car here if he was and what to a an emergency or to be a well if you if you was working during the day one would assume that if he drove to a st of all there's some confusion here as to whether or not the agency has argued this is substantial evidence we're looking at but but but the substantial evidence has to be that that is true that he is required to be an emergency st responder which he is not he is an investigator that investigated no one is well i think is required to protect and defend against terrorism and force intelligence the reds to investigate major criminal answers it seems to me that that's substantial evidence that a driver's license is required by this particular officer to be able to fulfill that mission but he had a driver's license i mean i think the issue is is that the only requirement the agency imposed was a valid state driver's license so the notice to the individual is in order to do this job you have to have a valid state driver's license at no point did my client not have a valid  some confusion here and i intend to ask the government about it but it seems to me that in the hierarchy of the military i'm and it's investigative and it is that the person at the top is not generally the point hand or the spear correct well that's the point i mean the director of the f b i is literally a law enforcement agent i don't think i would expect him to drive to a scene of a shootout and engage in firefight the would my client be required to if what i want to say is if n c l us wants to impose that level of obligation then give my client a service vehicle make him have a license to go anywhere emergency equipment make him respond to situations they did not i imagine that if like any law enforcement officer that if your client is on the scene and an event occur that i obligation to respond just like it is correct or any more right than the only the the interesting thing is that the government in its proof points to a washington post article which i didn't know it was proved but the washington post article sums it investigations that can cause the circumstances and as a supervisor he would normally go with the other agents and be accompanied he wouldn't normally respond himself and again how is this supposed to be legitimate if i don't require you to bring your car to work and there's a shooting a quantico how do you anticipate i'm going to get down to quantico if i'm not required to bring my car i have to get on the metro go back to my house drive my vehicle want to go that's the reality of what happened here so that the agency in order to justify this result which was a little unclear if you look at the opinion i'm not quite sure again what he actually got punished was the revocation of the license on the d a d base because then he got no notice that that would result in discipline  the cases cited i think we need to focus on the severity of the cases that are cited by the judge herself the minister of logic she cites brown which is which is a case where somebody who worked for more marine welfare the welfare and recreation department had an extra mount on the plane fare with a deployed marine so their job was to to bring the message to to to help families who had people deployed and he had an affair with someone that would contact which country and the mission in el rey vers department of health and human services it was child molestation for a gentleman who was in an agency charged with protecting children the court found that that's what's next is to federal employment in giles versus united states was an i r s agent who hit it was and i'll be honest i don't know whether or not in the end this rises to the sufficiency for the punishment if there was no nits if he had some understanding that these things would result in this but in this opinion everything's backwards oh we did this now we're going to figure out a reason why and in the courts one of the things i want to impress upon the court is another fundamental function you have is to address the propriety of a judicial decision and this judicial decision is improper it pe means that he's a he's an emergency st one it has nothing to do with that l e e p is designed to to take care of the overtime requirement that whatever otherwise apply to law enforcement agents who need to be reasonably available so my problem with a punishment or discipline right i mean the media setting aside the violations and and and also the tone of the of the opinion which i agree with i i have problems with that too but officer i think he i think there's substantial evidence that he had noticed that his actions were leading toward discipline how i would have notice of that if the government doesn't tell i mean it's not even in the table of you know it just it stands to reason that if i for example get a ticket and i get three points on my license as a driver i know i have x amount left next week i get another rd week i get another then i i should be exercising some sort of judgment as a licensed driver to to know would know that pretty soon my license is going to be suspended and your punishment is in the civil administrator body that handles traffic and other but substantial evidence i think supports that decision that they didn't take the action based on his tickets i would understand that if they said the reason we're doing this is because you accumulated traffic tickets they took the action only a based on the revocation the only issue year period she only looked at those traffic tickets when it came that penalty so respect to looking at the nexus requirement she was to limit it to just the seven infractions we're talking about and i want to remind important race for the record that there were seven traffic infraction successor and so for next as she did not look at that she was limited to seven traffic infractions we're talking about here and again the behave the misconduct was not necessarily just getting that suitcase the misconduct was the of humilation of the tickets that let me ask you questions about that was mr griffin ever disciplined for any of this traffic infractions he did not receive specific discipline from the agency for the seven traffic infractions no you take it prior discipline i believe were on this penalty charge is the revocation of the o t driver's license fall so revocation of the oh they driver's license is not listed here specifically the agency looked at the bottom of pastry seven seen at any traffic regulation violation of a traffic regulation that cost entry to yourself or others or damage to property or endangered safety of others or they didn't cost injury or property damage and didn't endanger the safety of others and then that chase reprimands for removal what's appropriate for anything a traffic infraction that could have caused damage injury or damage to yourself or to others that do it is traffic infractions and danger of the safety or damage to property of mr griffin or other he's in that damaged the property of anyone else but the agency would argue that there was a was the primary responder in those situations i'll restate my question again i'm unaware depending on where the location is and what the situation is i believe that can change so i can stand here and unequivocally tell you who would be consider st responder and i'd note that the a j deny use the language st responder that language was introduced by special agent reference brief their language a st responder with my use what language was used was emerging crisis defend agency's mission which is law enforcement that is where the administrative judge found a complete nexus between the misconduct in the agency's mission and the agency's mission is undoubtedly federal law enforcement is listed in the mission statement itself at appendix four  agents must be able and are paid a special supplement to respond to emergencies and any time that's false isn't it no you are i'm sorry where  sleep leave me pay leave pay yes for a supervisor is so that they'll respond at any time so they will be available to respond at any time according to the agency's me when the host country is seeing somebody pretty high up doing minor things i mean that assuming that that they're not there's no real damage they saw only going to ten miles an hour got it right well they got it right because that opinion that support the decision to support a bunch of them absolutely even the additional findings which again were above and beyond what was required for nexis and where mate so respond to it was clear testimony that japanese police police issued a number of one of those tickets a number of those tickets and so there is no question that the agency with embarrassed and that substantial evidence supports those findings even though they were in addition to the necessary findings that of a number of traffic violations over two year period and i know you know especially john griffin i've been there since two thousand and eleven these tickets start in two thousand and fourteen so the argument that he misunderstood a son except for really doesn't hold much weight or is without mir he was there for three years unable to evade a perfectly now for some reason for two years straight he consistently accumulated a number of say in terms of the fifteen versus the seven if you look at the judge's opinion she decided on the penalties appropriateness based on the communications by the two senior persons who said they were in barracks so all things flowed together she didn't dice that out so she did take into account the fifteen tickets and actually finding both nexus and a penalty as we pointed out in our brief she didn't take into account many of the douglas fact as appropriately the other thing we wanted to point out is the idea of embarrassment we actually asked the officials themselves whether they were embarrassed and they could not confirm that and in fact that again the distinction i want to make is this to set the he was never punished for getting the traffic to directly he was punished for the revocation of the license and i know the tickets flow into that and we can blend that but we need to be still a little bit clear about what he was punished for because this punishment was an imposed in japan there was no embarrassment in japan it was no japanese official calling up saying we were embarrassed by what you did there was no repercussions of that other than paying fines i if getting traffic tickets were a sign of port judgment frankly i don't think i could practice law with specially with the speed force that lawyers don't have to have good judgement obviously not one but what i'm trying to say is that that that's a little bit of a stretch particularly when you're talking about nexus for federal employment which requires something a little more substantial if i don't think i'll say i want to conclude this because i think it is important what can you do because i think that's important however an opinion like this shouldn't go and chase it no judge should denigrate in the manner that mr griffin was denigrate d in an opinion the way this was done and this court does have a responsibility so i urge you that even if you decide against us that you mention that the opinion because i represent federal employees who come there for their version of justice and none of them should