Oral Argument Legal Case Summary

Oral Audio Transcript(Beta version)

. Why is not a pension plan? Because the problem is that provision, the way it read, required the pension board to not only maintain it, but it would have had to establish it. And so that excluded, but- A plan established and maintained by a church affiliated organization. Right, but it said and. And so if the church established it, then it wouldn't have been a church plan established and maintained by a church. And it wouldn't have been a plan established and maintained by a pension board. So, and I think the clear thing in terms of this uninterrupt, I mean, the unpassed piece of legislation is it came out in the last couple of days of this several year process. And the change went unmentioned just to so to my ear. And it is, it's just implausible that that change, when I noticed, when it would have excluded all the plans that the religious community was up in arms about. And all the plans that prompted the amendment in the first place. But, there is a, there would be a simple way of accomplishing what you think this provision accomplishes, you know, something along the lines of just saying any plan maintained by a church affiliated organization is a church plan or something like that. It's, it's very odd language, this statutory language. And I'm wondering why you think that Congress chose to do what you think it chose to do in this perplexing way rather than in a straightforward way. Sure, I don't, I don't find it that that perplexing when your version would have messed up when you tried to, tried to put it all in 33A. It would have, by saying just a church plan, it would have redefined all of A, which had a second compound definition of it had to be a tax exempt under section 501. But just, just as Kay, let me cut to the chase here. If I had started from scratch, I don't know if I could have done this better. I doubt it because it's so complicated. But let's look at what actually happened in 1974. And how, just how different, see itself looks because remember, they started in 1974 and there wasn't A and there was a subparagraph C. And now we still have subparagraph C. So they were working with an existing apparatus. Now, old subparagraph C itself expressly required the church to establish C plans. And these C plans had to include the church's own actual employees. And Congress did two huge things in paragraph C now. It eliminated not only the express church establishment requirement, but the very reason for that requirement in the first place, namely that these plans include the church's own employees. So what we have now today, and I don't think this is disputed, we know. The one thing we do know is that C1 plans can be maintained, wholly and completely and absolutely outside the church, and can include solely, completely and wholly outside the church, all the employees of any tax exempt, religiously affiliated employer. So it just defies both common sense and our background understanding under Arissa to require the church to establish someone else's benefit plans when we know employers are usually the ones who set the employment benefits for their own employees. And then another problem with your reading, if this C1 seems to be predominantly about principal purpose organization

. And I think the respondents suggest that you would like it to read as we produced on page 27 of their brief. You would like it to say, includes a plan maintained by an organization controlled by or associated with the church. But this provision seems to be giving authority to principal purpose organizations and not to entities controlled by or associated. Right. Well, you're absolutely right except for the point about how I would like it to read, because we like the way it reads now. What this does is it, and there's no question that our reading gives independent meaning to principal purpose organization. We can see that an absolute full requirement is that the plan must be maintained by an organization, whether external internal, that has its principal purpose, the administration or funding of a plan. But Justice Ginsburg, the definition of a principal purpose organization includes a plan for any employee of a church. An employee of a church is defined expressly in C2 to mean any employee, not of a church, namely any church affiliated tax exempt organization. So whether it's a pension board that's either sitting in the hospital or religious charity or it's a pension board that's externally incorporated, Congress made sure that the maintaining organization, the one with control over the funds and the administration itself has to be religiously affiliated. This is a tricky question, but is this the question that was decided by the courts of appeals and is it the question that we agreed to review? No. So on remand, they have an argument that assuming we win and that there's no formal requirement that the church establish the plan that the maintaining organization in this case, these retirement committees don't qualify. But I do think it's quite important to understand that Justice Ginsburg, when Congress was drafting this maintaining by a PPO or principal purpose organization, it was merely defining exactly what before and after 1980, and regardless of the church plan context, what every employment pension plan in America looks like, they're being maintained by either a separate retirement committee or a separately incorporated retirement committee. Now, what I think, Justice Alito, they were trying to say it's anomalous that a plan could be established by the hospital, but it has to be run by an internal committee that's either controlled or affiliated with the church. But the anomalies are exponentially monstrous on the other side. Justice Ginsburg, in their view, Congress entrusted a pension board to have control over all the administration and the funding, but didn't allow it to establish the plan, which is absurd given the historical context that pension boards were both establishing and maintaining. The other thing that's anomalous about their proposal is it leaves out in the cold, the nuns, and it assumes that Congress rebuffed every religious denomination in America who complained to Congress about how the IRS had been interpreting this provision. And so what the IRS had done in 1977 is it looked at a, it was attempting to define what constitutes a church. And the IRS ruled that because nuns were not, to cut two orders of Catholic nuns, were not the church when they were caring for the sick, their hospital plan could not be covered. Mr. Blatt, I'm putting aside that purpose. Do you think Congress had in mind a corporations that are essentially like every other corporation except they're not for profit? I mean, these hospitals, some of them like dignity, the Catholic Church has disavowed any formal affiliation with it. Well, let me just, sorry, go ahead. Do you think that I understand the nuns, but you're talking now about an extreme? Well, the nuns established dignity in a priest established St. Peter's or a bishop rather, so, but let me just get back to the plan at issue in 1977. None say that, but they no longer are affiliated with the church. I'm happy to argue the facts of dignity, and we can, I mean, that is an argument the other side on remand, but the place where Congress dealt with your concern about the institution that's not religious enough was not with establishment, but C4 requires any church plan that's being maintained by these affiliated organizations to have common bonds and common religious bonds and convictions. Now, dignity itself has that in spades. It has six orders, not one, not two, not three, not four, not five

. Six orders of women religious running its mission, integrity committee. I'm not going to fight over that. Okay, well, dignity. But let's go back to my basic question. They're not doing anything different than any other hospital. Well, that's, that's- They are, or care center. They are competing. They're the fifth largest healthcare provider in the nation. They have 60,000 employees. Do you believe that Congress's vision was to let what is essentially a corporate entity out of protecting all of those employees? I mean, the Roman Catholic Church itself, I assume some sort of corporate entity, but let me get to the bottom line here. If you read Paul Clement's brief, filed by the Catholic Church itself, and the brief filed by the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the seventh day Adventist, that's four churches. Your decision applies to big and small, medium, extra religious, non-religious. So whatever you think of dignity, and I have no doubt that it's- It's both- It has both Catholic bonds and Catholic affiliations. But there's nothing about the size of this. We know Congress had in mind a hospital plan. The word hospital appears on every page of the legislative history. Ms. Blatt, I'd like to get to your question about the point you raised early on about the significance of the interpretation of the IRS, the pension benefit board, and who- What's the other one? The IRIS? The Department of Labor, IRS, and the pension benefit. What are the limits of that proposition? I mean, I don't quite understand you're saying because these three government agencies interpreted the statute one way, we shouldn't be more- We should be inclined to interpret it that way. Yes, I think that reliance is an important- Reason why you should defer under Schedmore. Well, I just- Maybe it's that I've never understood Schedmore. To me anyway, as it's been articulated, it seems to be the principle as you should defer to agencies when you agree with their interpretation. And I think that's- I don't see- Yeah, well, Schedmore says that- The statute means what it means, and it's nice that these agencies have interpreted it your way. But I think we have to go back and interpret the statute ourselves. Of course, but I mean, Schedmore is still a decision, and it says what you said, but it says anything you find persuasive. But the IRS- But why shouldn't it be persuasive? I mean, you've fallen, I think, the courts of appeals. You described their opinions as thinly reason, but that G.C.M

. has started it all from the IRS, is certainly thinly reason. So let me go back to what our argument is under the IRS. They prompted the amendment by trying to say what a church was. Congress responded not by telling the IRS what the church was or that the nuns were the church, but by making that question irrelevant. The IRS objected, and immediately after the law was passed, started reverse course on the very non-planet issue here. But let me get to the reason about Schedmore, what this case is about. And just two of these cases, Mr. Chief Justice, the respondents seek $11 billion. I am not kidding, $11 billion per year. That's $66 billion in two cases if a RISC's six-year statute of limitations applies. The risk that the other side could recover, even any fraction of that amount, is reason enough for you to make sure that the IRS's decision is somehow unreasonable that would jettison 30 years of settled expectations. Well, quite a part from the IRS reasonable, the respondent says, tell this, there were, I assume hundreds of IRS letters. And it was because of this problem that Congress acted. Without getting into the legislative history, which I found totally uninformative, why is it that we can give so much weight to these letters when there was no notice and comment regulation? And tell me a little bit about how widespread and well understood the DOL position was. Well, they're all. And then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, says, oh, the, oh, the Congress never even knew about these letters, which sounds out to me, but. Congress, sir, I mean, every, every religious faith in America complained to Congress. Congress introduced the bills in response to the religious community. And immediately after, and the pension rights center, that's an amicus, was testifying, it's, it's, it's just, it's silly to think that they didn't have to use the internet, at least by whenever the internet came around, it couldn't figure out, or go to the library, it didn't, couldn't read a, a private letter ruling. But I think the significance is it's not just even the retroactive penalties. Countless plans have been structured around the IRS, the Department of Labor and the PBG's view. And if you affirm, just for all the existing plans that were not established, you're unleashing a torrent of undesirable unintended consequences, not just for the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, my question is, what can you point to to tell us that the IRS letters were an important part of the motivation for Congress to make this change? Okay, so it was the IRS's ruling under, for the 1977 Catholic nun plan. And 20, I think 20 letters and the church alliance representing over 27 denominations, 50 million people, complained bitterly to Congress. In the entire, I know you don't want to look at legislative history, but every single thing is about how hospitals and church agencies are part of an essential to the church. And the only way justice Kennedy to interpret that is that they were talking about the IRS's definition that because nuns were not performing priestly functions, they weren't the church. And I just think, so the IRS was at the table, the IRS is objecting, the IRS goes home and starts immediately reversing course. And you have the fact that the, I mean, we've talked about the IRS. The other side concedes that another major purpose was to put congregational religions on parity with hierarchical congregations. And we know that the 1974 Act excluded these pension board established and maintained plans

. And under respondents interpretations, these plans too were left out in the cold. We know it's the 1900s, these Protestant pension boards were not only maintaining plans, they established, but plans that their church agencies had established. If I could reserve the rest of my time. Thank you, council. Mr. Stewart? Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court. I'd like to first pick up on a point that Ms. Black alluded to when she was describing the history of the statute and its amendment. I think the statute in its current form is probably not the type of provision that Congress would draft if it were doing the whole thing in one fell swoop. But it's important to understand that the text of the current provision is the combination of things that were done in 1974 and things that were done in 1980. Congress enacted the original church plan provision, presumably it had in mind particular plans that were established and maintained by churches and it covered those. And pretty quickly problems came to light. Other types of plans were found not to be covered by the administrative agency that Congress evidently believed should be covered. And so when Congress amended the provision in 1980, it chose to work within the existing framework. We're not quite sure why, but at least one plausible explanation would be there were some church plans that had been found to be covered under the old established and maintained by a church language. Congress made it wanted to avoid any possible inference that those plans were no longer covered and so it retained the original language but defined it to include something else. And when Congress passed the provision that Ms. Black was discussing earlier, C1 that refers to a plan established and maintained for its employees, includes a plan maintained by a principal purpose organization. I think it's helpful to recognize that there are two different sorts of definitional provisions that Congress sometimes enact. Sometimes when Congress and acts a definition, it's trying to clarify what the defined term really means. And when Congress acts in that way, we tend to strain to read the definition in a way that makes it consistent with ordinary understandings of the defined term. But sometimes Congress will enact a provision that says something like the purposes of this statute, the term state includes the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. When Congress does that, it's not trying to explain what state really means. It's simply using a shorthand formulation to say, for purposes of this statute, we want DC and Puerto Rico to be treated the same way that the 50 states would be treated. And that's really what Congress was doing in the 1980 amendment. When it defined the term plan established and maintained by a church to include plans that satisfied the prerequisites in the amendments, it was not saying this is what a plan established and maintained by a church really is. It was saying, for purposes of the church plan exemption, we want these to be treated the same. Mr

. Stewart, can I ask you about some of the respondents' hypotheticals. Were they offer hypothetical statutes that are very similar in structure to this one? And it's pretty clear that you would read the ones about disabled veterans and the one about the two presidential criteria. And it's pretty clear that you would read those sentences their way rather than your way. In other words, it's just going to one of the criteria. And I'm wondering why you think that's true, that they can come up with these hypotheticals that so clearly should be interpreted their way rather than your way. I guess I would say about the hypothetical that is used most often, person disabled and a veteran includes a member of the National Guard. I think if you read it absolutely, literally, you would still say a National Guard member who is not disabled is covered. Now, I think- I mean, that would seem ridiculous, right? I think the instinct that the context would be such that courts would assume, I believe that Congress had simply made a sort of Scrivener's error, that Congress had used language sloppily. Part of that has to do with the instinct that I alluded to earlier. That is, we would tend to regard a provision like that as one in which Congress was really trying to explain what the term person who is disabled and a veteran means. And so we would strain to read the definition in a way that made it consistent. If Congress passed a statute that said something like person who is disabled and a veteran shall include any federal employee with 30 years or more of service. At that point, we would understand Congress has just abandoned the effort to explain what person who is disabled and a veteran actually means. It is decided for whatever reason that it wants employees with a federal employees with unusually long service to get the same benefits as a disabled veteran would get under a particular statute and as you shorthand to accomplish that. I would think that the way that hypothetical works. It is sort of, we are setting these two criteria, you have to be a veteran and you have to be disabled. And then we are going to say there is a special case of veterans. We also mean to include national guard folks and that is not disqualifying the fact that it is a national guard folks, but the two criteria are still the two criteria. All we are suggesting is that it is not disqualifying that you are a national guard. And you could read this language similarly. It is not disqualifying that it is maintained by a different kind of organization. I guess all I would concede based on these hypotheticals is that sometimes a provision that is structured in this way will give rise to the natural inference that Congress wanted to do something other than simply a particular thing to fall within the whole defined term. And it had in mind a part. But I think in constricting this provision it may be helpful to look at page 24 of the government's brief, which explains, which kind of clarifies something that Ms. Black was referring to earlier, that on page 24 of the government's brief we lay out the way in which this amendment changed from the time it was first introduced in 1979 to when it was enacted in 1980. And as the questioning in the first part of the argument explained, the original introduced provision said, a plan established and maintained by a church shall include a plan established and maintained by a principal purpose organization. And so the words established and appeared two places in that introduced provision. And as we agree with Ms. Black, that the most likely explanation for what by Congress took out the second established and was that it was worried about plans that would fall between two stools, a plan that was established by a church but maintained by a principal purpose organization

. The hypothetical would be like this case or this case would be like the hypothetical, if the requirement that the plan be established by the church was absolutely critical as the requirement that the individual have a disability is absolutely critical in the hypothetical, which gets to the question, what is the significance in practical terms of a plan being established by a church? Now, Mr. Feldman says that an entity that establishes a plan is financially responsible for paying benefits under the plan if the plan is unable to do that with its assets. But you say that's not correct, is that right? That's not correct. I mean, in the typical aristocrat case, you will have a plan established and maintained by a single employer and that employer will be responsible for making good on the promises and that employer may be a defendant in a suit if the promises are breached. But that doesn't mean that the entity that establishes the plan quite established is always going to be on the hook. Sometimes on the hook? Sometimes on the hook, if the established maintains ongoing responsibility. But there's no reason to think even if you applied a RISA standards that a church that established the plan but then left the administration of the plan entirely in the hands of somebody else could be held liable under a RISA. But second, the whole point of the church plan exemption is that plans that qualify will not be regulated under a RISA at all, they will be regulated under state law. So if a church in order to satisfy this requirement established the plan and then left its maintenance to somebody else, whether the church would have any ongoing liability would depend on state laws that might vary around the country. So, could you tell me what provision of a RISA? I'll ask Mr. Feldman the same thing if I have a chance. What provision of a RISA explains which entity, if any, is responsible for paying benefits if, for example, a defined benefit plan is unable to do that with the assets in the plan? I don't believe there is a provision of a RISA that spells that out. My understanding, and I'm sorry I don't have the statutory site, is that there is a provision of a RISA that authorizes the plan beneficiaries to sue, but it doesn't specify who the defendant should be. And so the courts have devised tests and approaches to determine in particular cases who the proper defendant is. And to some extent, that will depend upon the way the plan itself is constructed. That is, the plan may say that the responsibility for doing certain things is that of the employer, for doing other things that may be that of the insurer. And so the proper defendant may determine on where responsibility is allocated under the terms of the plan. But so I agree that one big difference between this case and the hypotheticals is that the hypothetical is constructed in a way that suggests disability has to be crucial to entitlement to benefits. Whereas here, there's no reason to think that Congress in 1980, regarded church establishment as crucial to the exemption. And the point I was trying to make about was going to make about, but I guess that's the question, right? And the structure is the same. I guess the point I was going to make about, if I could finish this, about the way in which the statute changed from introduction to final passage is that everyone agrees that Congress could have more clearly achieved the objective that respondent says they were trying to achieve. If it had said, a plan maintained by a church includes a plan maintained by a principal purpose organization. And so the idea seems to be, Congress was just a little bit careless in leaving in established and maintained at the beginning. That seems particularly implausible given the care they took to knock out the second iteration of established and in the same provision. Thank you, Council. Mr. Felden. Mr. Felden, I have a starting question, which is, I'm torn

. This could be read either way in my mind. If I believe that, what do I go to to break the tie? I think if you look at what Congress was trying, this is what I would say. If you accept their view, what you end up with is a statute that doesn't fit what Congress enacted at all and creates anomalies that are impossible to explain. And for those reasons, at least, as well as the fact that Congress was very jealous about creating exemptions to a RISSA. A RISSA covers every private employer, every non-profit, every hospital in the country. And there's only one category except there's only one category excluded. And that's church plans. And Congress actually defined church plans carefully. They wanted a close tie between the church and the plan because their purpose was they didn't want to go involved in getting involved in church affairs. And so they said, church plan has to be established and maintained by a church. It needs to fit both criteria because we want, if there's church involvement here, we want hands off. If there's no church involvement, though, there's no reason why these hospitals, like any other hospital in the country, and like many other, every other firm in the country, shouldn't have to provide the employees with the pension insurance to protect them against the possibility that when the plan goes bust, they end up with nothing. Isn't there, didn't Congress provide for church involvement by making the employees covered by the principal purpose entity? Church employees? No, it's actually, well, I would just, no, it didn't actually, the, the, that statute actually doesn't say anything about the principal purpose entity. So there's three different kinds of things we're talking about here. There are churches themselves. There's principal purpose organizations, which are organizations that are in the business of just giving a point to the church agency employees. Right. And the church, it, what it said was, yes, it's, it was facing a problem in 1980, which was the original statute said, if you're a church, you can cover not only your own employees, but you can also cover the employees of your church agencies. That's what the original statute said, but only until 1982. And that is what everybody was objecting to. And that's why people were, people were objecting to the withdrawal of that sunset provision that was going to happen in 1982. And the reason why they were talking about agencies are very closely related to churches. That was not, it was not to say, their view is the Congress wanted to allow fission. They wanted these agencies to split up, these plans to split apart. And the agency to have their own plan and the church to have their own plan, that's what they wanted. But it's exactly the opposite. They wanted to allow churches to continue as they had been to provide, to have a plan that would cover both the church's employees and the agencies employees. And they were interested in continued fusion. They weren't interested in fission

. And actually there's nobody anywhere who talked about this statute who said, well, what we really need is to allow another whole class of private entities to establish their own plans. So in the provision that you're going to refer to, they say, well, the employees of the church associated agency will be deemed to be employees of the churches. Congress passed that provision to solve exactly the 1982 problem. Okay, a church plan has to be established and maintained by a church. This is in A, which was left unchanged. Established and maintained by a church for its employees. And then in the original statute, they said, well, we don't really care who's employees they are, but you can also cover the church agency. But if that were so evident, why do the three government agencies responsible in this area, the IRS, the Department of Labor, the PBG, see why for 30 years did they take the opposite view? Well, it's, they took this view at the early 1980s at a time when they were facing one or two. I'm not sure they knew at the time when they started down this road what it was going to lead to in terms of the hundreds of hospitals and other businesses that are going to be able to just deprive their employees of a recipient. But it led to hundreds of letters from the IRS. Is that an exaggeration or is that hundreds of IRS letters approving? And actually the first, the mother of them all, which was the General Counsel Memorandum from 8283, it says, this may not be relied upon or cited as precedent. And the statute that authorized all these private letter rulings, which were all done on an ex-party basis and without the opportunity. But nevertheless, it shows that an entity that had one of these plans that were there was summed out was proceeding in good faith with the insurance, with the assurance of the IRS that what they were doing was lawful. Yes. And that entitled them to exactly what it was supposed. The government has that this may not be relied upon language because it didn't want to be bound to this. That standard language in a private letter ruling, isn't it? Yes. Okay. So the other letter varies. So when this goes on and on, quite with the reference to the legislative history of which Senator said what, which I think is unhelpful, we do know that the climate, the culture, the economic problem after 30 years was that many of these associations which had proceeded in good faith based on the IRS were at risk of tremendous liability. And that's certainly a reason for understanding A. Y. Congress acted and B. The problem it wanted to solve in the way the petitioner said it did. You're on, I don't think that that's right. So these cases are about primarily overwhelmingly forward looking remedies. They're about bringing these plans into accord with the RISA. Degetting insurance for these plans so that their employees can be sure that they get their benefits when they're supposed to get it. Wasn't this plan incorrect when she said that the complaints seek billions of dollars in penalties? Right

. We don't know all the facts of these cases, but I, what was the answer to my question? Yes. Well, they, they don't actually, I don't believe they name a dollar figure for the penalty. Well, they, if you figured out the penalties, would they be billions of dollars? No one has ever, I'll- And how can you say that this is primarily about forward looking things? Because I think that everybody admits in this case, not only everybody admits, the statute, the authority to issue penalties is in the district court's discretion. And the, nobody has ever, no court has ever, I don't think, issued, had a RISA penalty close to that. And this court has repeatedly emphasized that when you're addressing a remedy under 502A3 or 502C3, you're supposed to take into account the equities of the situation. So if you- And one equity would be the reliance. One, a court might well say, well, we need to statute the way the courts of appeals have, but we're not going to give you any retrospective relief because you legitimately, in good faith, rely. I completely agree. The good faith of the party is actually- I understand that, but I mean, you said that this is primarily- Well, don't worry about the penalties. This is primarily about forward looking things. And yet, the complaints ask for the penalties. Are you willing on behalf of your clients to disavow any requests for penalties? No, I'm not. And how can you say that it's primarily about forward looking? Because- I mean, I can say that because we don't know the facts of this case. I'm willing to say that if all the facts suggested that they acted in good faith throughout and just made a mistake, and they couldn't have been expected to do anything else, then I would think they wouldn't be awarding the penalty. Well, they had the penalty. Whatever reliance was reasonable based on these hundreds of letters. That's one thing. How about relying on the literal meaning of the central statutory provision? Yes. And I think that the literal meaning of that as all three courts of appeals unanimously agreed, the literal meaning of that was, this is not a standalone statute that says, you know, there are statutes in the U.S. code that say that don't define a term. And then they say, but a felony includes something or other. Okay, they don't define felony. They just say a felony includes something or other. That's one kind of statute. And then courts are supposed to figure out what else a felony includes. But this statute doesn't do that. And in fact, the language at the beginning of C1 of plan established and maintained by a church, ties it to this, you actually can't read C1 as a standalone statute because it wouldn't make any sense. Well, I'm talking about the literal language of C1. And you're now talking about everything else. The literal language of C1 says a plan established and maintained by a church includes a plan that is maintained by a principal purpose organization. And it's as simple as that that read literally it is not required that it be established and by a church. Now, you have other arguments. But I just, you're on our respectfully disagree. The Court, if the Court has said one thing more often than anything else in the context of statute or interpretation, it's that you have to read things in context and you have to read statutes as a whole. And this C1 has language that ties it directly back to A, which Congress said in 1980, we are retaining A the way it is. And I think you have to read them both together. If you read them both together, what you say, the basic form is whether it's the example of the disabled veterans, the President or the examples that they given the reply brief. The basic form of this is if you have a statute that says, here's a rule that applies to A and B. And then it says A and B includes a particular kind of B, which is what this says, right? Establish and maintain includes a particular kind of maintenance. Then that is naturally taken to mean, well, we're expanding or clarifying the B, but we're not doing anything to the A. Why would you repeat the requirement of the A? In other words, Congress could have just said a plan maintained by a church includes a plan maintained by one of these organizations. And that's another way of asking the question is under your interpretation, established and have no function. I actually don't think that that's quite right. They could have worded this other ways. They certainly could have worded this statute many other ways to accomplish respondent position, petitioner's position, position. But the point of repeating that language was directly to tie it, it was one way, to directly tie it back into A and say, okay, now we're talking about these things, we're going to include a particular kind of B. Now that is one thing to notice, it's not B'd, it doesn't say, I mean, petitioner's having no answer for this at all. Why Congress wanted to require them to have a principal purpose organization at all, churches don't have to have that. And why did Congress trust them to establish their own plans and then say, but we actually you can establish your plans, dignity, hospital. But you don't have to maintain the plan, you can't maintain, we are prohibiting you from maintaining your plan. And you have to go to a principal, an agency that's principally involved in dealing with employee benefits that otherwise satisfies the requirements. And you have to have them maintain it. And there's no- From your perspective, what is the practical significance of requiring that the, excuse me, plans be established by a church? I think the practical significance is Congress's purpose here, and again, I don't think this is a dispute and there's no other purpose that's been suggested, was hands off the church. If a church is involved with a plan, we don't, we don't, we want to have, leave them the freedom to be outside of a rissa. But there's no church involved, when there's no church involved, as there is in this case, the church has no direction involved. I think you can with that. And the church is involved to the extent, the law says that the principal purpose agency is maintaining that fund for people who are defined to be church employees

. And you're now talking about everything else. The literal language of C1 says a plan established and maintained by a church includes a plan that is maintained by a principal purpose organization. And it's as simple as that that read literally it is not required that it be established and by a church. Now, you have other arguments. But I just, you're on our respectfully disagree. The Court, if the Court has said one thing more often than anything else in the context of statute or interpretation, it's that you have to read things in context and you have to read statutes as a whole. And this C1 has language that ties it directly back to A, which Congress said in 1980, we are retaining A the way it is. And I think you have to read them both together. If you read them both together, what you say, the basic form is whether it's the example of the disabled veterans, the President or the examples that they given the reply brief. The basic form of this is if you have a statute that says, here's a rule that applies to A and B. And then it says A and B includes a particular kind of B, which is what this says, right? Establish and maintain includes a particular kind of maintenance. Then that is naturally taken to mean, well, we're expanding or clarifying the B, but we're not doing anything to the A. Why would you repeat the requirement of the A? In other words, Congress could have just said a plan maintained by a church includes a plan maintained by one of these organizations. And that's another way of asking the question is under your interpretation, established and have no function. I actually don't think that that's quite right. They could have worded this other ways. They certainly could have worded this statute many other ways to accomplish respondent position, petitioner's position, position. But the point of repeating that language was directly to tie it, it was one way, to directly tie it back into A and say, okay, now we're talking about these things, we're going to include a particular kind of B. Now that is one thing to notice, it's not B'd, it doesn't say, I mean, petitioner's having no answer for this at all. Why Congress wanted to require them to have a principal purpose organization at all, churches don't have to have that. And why did Congress trust them to establish their own plans and then say, but we actually you can establish your plans, dignity, hospital. But you don't have to maintain the plan, you can't maintain, we are prohibiting you from maintaining your plan. And you have to go to a principal, an agency that's principally involved in dealing with employee benefits that otherwise satisfies the requirements. And you have to have them maintain it. And there's no- From your perspective, what is the practical significance of requiring that the, excuse me, plans be established by a church? I think the practical significance is Congress's purpose here, and again, I don't think this is a dispute and there's no other purpose that's been suggested, was hands off the church. If a church is involved with a plan, we don't, we don't, we want to have, leave them the freedom to be outside of a rissa. But there's no church involved, when there's no church involved, as there is in this case, the church has no direction involved. I think you can with that. And the church is involved to the extent, the law says that the principal purpose agency is maintaining that fund for people who are defined to be church employees. But there- The church is not involved in that situation before. No, actually, I think you can, but what I'm saying is the church itself, these employees who are so defined are actually employees of the church agency. But the church itself has no- The church's zero involvement with this plan. There's nothing that says the church will be deemed to have established the plan or the church. These plans have zero involvement with any church. But they have involvement with the church agency, right? They do. And so I thought the whole concern with the original IRS problem was that the IRS was treating church agencies as if they were not engaged in a church function. No, they were saying, okay, the church has an agency whose mission is to feed the hungry, clothenegid, all of that, and the IRS was saying, well, that's not a church. It's got nothing to do with it. And now it's changed. And those individuals who are engaged in that social mission are treated as members of the church agency. They are treated that way so that the church agency- The church agency. They are doing that so that the church can include them in its plan if they want it. And that, if the church wants to do that, that's fine, and they can do that. But they're not, the point of that provision was to eliminate the 1982 cutoff. The wouldn't have allowed the church to continue to do that. And the church- Let's go to that 1982. Tell me how your reading of this statute includes the organizations that were clamoring and for whom the IRS had said were covered by this provision. The pension boards that were separate from the church and Ms. Blatt pointed to the sisters, the nuns who were also seeking coverage. How does your reading take care of those two situations facing Congress? I think it actually perfectly matches with those two situations. The C2 and C3 provisions, as I said, they allowed churches to continue if they wanted to cover church agencies eliminated the 1982 cutoff that people were concerned about. The C1 provision said that was not a provision about let's drastically expand the types of entities that are, and by millions of employees, the types of employees who don't have a risk of protection. This was what Representative Carnival termed a technical. But I would have thought that the one thing that seems most clear from a pretty murky legislative history is the church pension boards were supposed to be included in this. And the church pension boards, some of them, were established, their plans were established by the church, some of them not. So you would be taking out some of these church pension boards that I thought are the sort of quintessential group that this was designed to include. I really disagree with the premise of that. If you look back, you know, there is nothing in the legislative history that said, or anybody, there's, let me say this correctly, you know, there's a few stray references in letters from pension boards saying, yeah, we established a plan

. But there- The church is not involved in that situation before. No, actually, I think you can, but what I'm saying is the church itself, these employees who are so defined are actually employees of the church agency. But the church itself has no- The church's zero involvement with this plan. There's nothing that says the church will be deemed to have established the plan or the church. These plans have zero involvement with any church. But they have involvement with the church agency, right? They do. And so I thought the whole concern with the original IRS problem was that the IRS was treating church agencies as if they were not engaged in a church function. No, they were saying, okay, the church has an agency whose mission is to feed the hungry, clothenegid, all of that, and the IRS was saying, well, that's not a church. It's got nothing to do with it. And now it's changed. And those individuals who are engaged in that social mission are treated as members of the church agency. They are treated that way so that the church agency- The church agency. They are doing that so that the church can include them in its plan if they want it. And that, if the church wants to do that, that's fine, and they can do that. But they're not, the point of that provision was to eliminate the 1982 cutoff. The wouldn't have allowed the church to continue to do that. And the church- Let's go to that 1982. Tell me how your reading of this statute includes the organizations that were clamoring and for whom the IRS had said were covered by this provision. The pension boards that were separate from the church and Ms. Blatt pointed to the sisters, the nuns who were also seeking coverage. How does your reading take care of those two situations facing Congress? I think it actually perfectly matches with those two situations. The C2 and C3 provisions, as I said, they allowed churches to continue if they wanted to cover church agencies eliminated the 1982 cutoff that people were concerned about. The C1 provision said that was not a provision about let's drastically expand the types of entities that are, and by millions of employees, the types of employees who don't have a risk of protection. This was what Representative Carnival termed a technical. But I would have thought that the one thing that seems most clear from a pretty murky legislative history is the church pension boards were supposed to be included in this. And the church pension boards, some of them, were established, their plans were established by the church, some of them not. So you would be taking out some of these church pension boards that I thought are the sort of quintessential group that this was designed to include. I really disagree with the premise of that. If you look back, you know, there is nothing in the legislative history that said, or anybody, there's, let me say this correctly, you know, there's a few stray references in letters from pension boards saying, yeah, we established a plan. But we actually go over each of the ones in our brief and each of the ones that they cite. And they're actually Congress had no, that was not the way they operated then, it's actually not the way they operate now. The way they operate is, these are for congregation churches primarily. And in a congregational type of setup, you have an assembly or synod of the church itself. And this is just an assembly of all the local churches and they will establish the plans. They don't have the audience to ask what does it mean to establish a plan. If establishing is all important in your view of it. So I didn't see any statutory definition of what it takes to establish a plan. And as this courts for Halifax case, I think establishes, it means making a commitment to provide some kind of reasonably definite benefits to some employees, you know, reasonably well-defined. That's what it means. If you don't make that commitment, if you say if the church said, we want somebody else to have a plan and laid out what the terms would be, actually the church would definitely not have established a plan. It would be somebody else who if they took them up on it would. But for the church to establish a plan means it, in this case is actually the dignity cases of perfect example. The district court, it's not, it's usually a difficult inquiry. The district court here found, and if you look around page 56, A, of the cert petition appendix in the dignity case, the district court said, well, who established this plan? Well, dignity, the hospital, they passed a corporate resolution and adopted a summary, the appropriate corporate officers adopted a summary plan description. And they established the plan and that committed dignity to doing certain things. And it wasn't somebody else who did it. And that's usually what that inquiry is. You need some kind of commitment. Now, Congress, when that kind of commitment was made by a church, Congress said we want hands off, and they had good reasons for doing it. It's very much like in the tax code, there's numerous other places where you have to distinguish which between churches and church agencies in Section 26, UIC, 7, 6, 11, gives churches quite extraordinary protection against audits, against the circumstances under which they can be audited, the types of things that can be looked at, and the rights they have during the audit. It applies only to churches and not to agencies. And the principle was the same principle here is, we don't want the government looking into the books and records of churches. And I think that was from the situation where the church establishes the plan. And then turns over the maintenance of the plan to a principle purpose organization. The audits would be the books of the principle purpose organization. They wouldn't be very much to look for in the records of the church. So if that was the purpose of it, I don't see what the establishment required. I would think that it's more than just looking at the books and records at that particular time

. But we actually go over each of the ones in our brief and each of the ones that they cite. And they're actually Congress had no, that was not the way they operated then, it's actually not the way they operate now. The way they operate is, these are for congregation churches primarily. And in a congregational type of setup, you have an assembly or synod of the church itself. And this is just an assembly of all the local churches and they will establish the plans. They don't have the audience to ask what does it mean to establish a plan. If establishing is all important in your view of it. So I didn't see any statutory definition of what it takes to establish a plan. And as this courts for Halifax case, I think establishes, it means making a commitment to provide some kind of reasonably definite benefits to some employees, you know, reasonably well-defined. That's what it means. If you don't make that commitment, if you say if the church said, we want somebody else to have a plan and laid out what the terms would be, actually the church would definitely not have established a plan. It would be somebody else who if they took them up on it would. But for the church to establish a plan means it, in this case is actually the dignity cases of perfect example. The district court, it's not, it's usually a difficult inquiry. The district court here found, and if you look around page 56, A, of the cert petition appendix in the dignity case, the district court said, well, who established this plan? Well, dignity, the hospital, they passed a corporate resolution and adopted a summary, the appropriate corporate officers adopted a summary plan description. And they established the plan and that committed dignity to doing certain things. And it wasn't somebody else who did it. And that's usually what that inquiry is. You need some kind of commitment. Now, Congress, when that kind of commitment was made by a church, Congress said we want hands off, and they had good reasons for doing it. It's very much like in the tax code, there's numerous other places where you have to distinguish which between churches and church agencies in Section 26, UIC, 7, 6, 11, gives churches quite extraordinary protection against audits, against the circumstances under which they can be audited, the types of things that can be looked at, and the rights they have during the audit. It applies only to churches and not to agencies. And the principle was the same principle here is, we don't want the government looking into the books and records of churches. And I think that was from the situation where the church establishes the plan. And then turns over the maintenance of the plan to a principle purpose organization. The audits would be the books of the principle purpose organization. They wouldn't be very much to look for in the records of the church. So if that was the purpose of it, I don't see what the establishment required. I would think that it's more than just looking at the books and records at that particular time. When the church is establishing a plan, it's making some kind of commitment of what kind of benefits who's going to get and when. That's what it means to establish a plan and how it's going to be funded. And- Well, you say, where do I look to find that? And where do I look to find the provision that says what you say, which is that the entity that establishes a plan is financially responsible? The financial, it's financially responsible to the extent that what it says when it establish the plan. I mean, I suppose, especially if it's not so, it's for a reasonable, limited, liable- It's responsible to the extent the plan makes it responsible, is that the answer? It's- It's- It's- Under a risk of plans can't limit their liability. But I mean, the- the- the person- parties establishing plans can't. But under- if it's not an over-risk of plan, they probably can have provisions that they're only going to give you what's- the money that's in the plan. But they still have to make a commitment and that would be governed- I suppose presumably in the case of a non-arrisk of plan by State law. But- Where is the provision of a RISSA that supports what you said, which is- it seems to me to be a significant point, that the entity that establishes the plan is financially responsible for the plan. What is the provision of a RISSA? It makes sense, that. It's- I think it's- I can't cite it to you right now, the- the number, but it's the provision that says you have to carry out the terms of a plan and what a plan. I thought Mr. Stewart suggested the opposite. No, and he- I don't think so. I think he said the employees can sue- if it's a RISSA plan, you can sue under 502 for whatever the benefits are that you've been promised. But- It's sue the entity establishing it or the person- or the entity maintaining the plan. You could- you could- first of all, frequently they're the same. But if they're different, it certainly- Well, in this case- In this case, they're not, right? In this case, I think they are actually. Well, you're talking about- I thought the principal- purpose agency is the one- But the principle- the principle- the principle- the internal committee of- of petitioners. So I don't think there would be any difference in suing- you think you would sue petitioners. That's all- there wouldn't- there's nobody else to sue. But I- I guess you would sue both of them, actually. But if I could- Is it- Can a internal committee of a church affiliated organization, qualified as a principal- purpose organization? We believe that it can't. And in fact, there would be no reason at all for Congress to have- we acquired, according to my friend, Congress wanted to be sure that whoever's maintaining the plan. There's somebody who's associated with the church. But there was no reason to talk about principal- purpose employee benefit organizations that are primarily involved in- employee benefits if that's what you wanted to accomplish. The- the- this makes sense if you look at it as something that congregational denominations were doing as of 1980, which is they founded convenient to have the maintenance of the plan done by a organization that was an employee benefits organization. And nobody objected to that. They said, that's fine, Mr. Halperin didn't object to it

. When the church is establishing a plan, it's making some kind of commitment of what kind of benefits who's going to get and when. That's what it means to establish a plan and how it's going to be funded. And- Well, you say, where do I look to find that? And where do I look to find the provision that says what you say, which is that the entity that establishes a plan is financially responsible? The financial, it's financially responsible to the extent that what it says when it establish the plan. I mean, I suppose, especially if it's not so, it's for a reasonable, limited, liable- It's responsible to the extent the plan makes it responsible, is that the answer? It's- It's- It's- Under a risk of plans can't limit their liability. But I mean, the- the- the person- parties establishing plans can't. But under- if it's not an over-risk of plan, they probably can have provisions that they're only going to give you what's- the money that's in the plan. But they still have to make a commitment and that would be governed- I suppose presumably in the case of a non-arrisk of plan by State law. But- Where is the provision of a RISSA that supports what you said, which is- it seems to me to be a significant point, that the entity that establishes the plan is financially responsible for the plan. What is the provision of a RISSA? It makes sense, that. It's- I think it's- I can't cite it to you right now, the- the number, but it's the provision that says you have to carry out the terms of a plan and what a plan. I thought Mr. Stewart suggested the opposite. No, and he- I don't think so. I think he said the employees can sue- if it's a RISSA plan, you can sue under 502 for whatever the benefits are that you've been promised. But- It's sue the entity establishing it or the person- or the entity maintaining the plan. You could- you could- first of all, frequently they're the same. But if they're different, it certainly- Well, in this case- In this case, they're not, right? In this case, I think they are actually. Well, you're talking about- I thought the principal- purpose agency is the one- But the principle- the principle- the principle- the internal committee of- of petitioners. So I don't think there would be any difference in suing- you think you would sue petitioners. That's all- there wouldn't- there's nobody else to sue. But I- I guess you would sue both of them, actually. But if I could- Is it- Can a internal committee of a church affiliated organization, qualified as a principal- purpose organization? We believe that it can't. And in fact, there would be no reason at all for Congress to have- we acquired, according to my friend, Congress wanted to be sure that whoever's maintaining the plan. There's somebody who's associated with the church. But there was no reason to talk about principal- purpose employee benefit organizations that are primarily involved in- employee benefits if that's what you wanted to accomplish. The- the- this makes sense if you look at it as something that congregational denominations were doing as of 1980, which is they founded convenient to have the maintenance of the plan done by a organization that was an employee benefits organization. And nobody objected to that. They said, that's fine, Mr. Halperin didn't object to it. Nobody did. That's fine if you wanted. If that's a convenient way- they were talking about how to run a plan, not opening up the plan to a broad range, not opening up the exemption to a broad range of plans and probably millions of employees. And just back- Why? B. C. How many- how many- how many employees did come in under the IRS interpretation for 30 years that wouldn't have come in had the IRS followed yours, if you know? About- I- I just rough it. I would assume all of them. No, no. I mean, I'd like to get a rough idea of what you're talking about because your argument practically depends on if we keep following the IRS interpretation. There'll be vast numbers of plans that come in that wouldn't otherwise. They followed it for 30 years. I'd like to get a rough and pure good idea of how many have come in because they didn't accept your interpretation. How many employees are- B. C. Are our exempt that wouldn't have otherwise been? Right. They say that there are a million employees that have been in these plans. Actually, though, there's probably millions of more employees in the future. Once this Court reaches a decision, that- Why- why won't they be kept out by the principal purpose definition unless they really are the little sisters of the poor? They wouldn't be kept out any more than- than petitioners in this case would be. I mean, it would be the same. Well, that may be, but there's an issue as well. The petitioners in this case, which ones come in and which ones don't? Right. But I think really the point is that there's a lot- The answer is you don't know. Okay, so the- That's at least what I'm getting. I wanted to get a rough idea of the scope of the practical extent of the two interpretations. And I think the answer is you don't know. Well, I don't- We haven't- You don't have to know. All these cases haven't been litigated and I can't say- Okay, all of them- All of them- All of them- All of them- I want to know- Establishes the plan. The little sisters of the poor maintain it. On your definition, is it in or out? Uh, the exemption- or the exempt not? If the little sisters of the poor are under- I'm assuming they're a principal purpose organization

. Nobody did. That's fine if you wanted. If that's a convenient way- they were talking about how to run a plan, not opening up the plan to a broad range, not opening up the exemption to a broad range of plans and probably millions of employees. And just back- Why? B. C. How many- how many- how many employees did come in under the IRS interpretation for 30 years that wouldn't have come in had the IRS followed yours, if you know? About- I- I just rough it. I would assume all of them. No, no. I mean, I'd like to get a rough idea of what you're talking about because your argument practically depends on if we keep following the IRS interpretation. There'll be vast numbers of plans that come in that wouldn't otherwise. They followed it for 30 years. I'd like to get a rough and pure good idea of how many have come in because they didn't accept your interpretation. How many employees are- B. C. Are our exempt that wouldn't have otherwise been? Right. They say that there are a million employees that have been in these plans. Actually, though, there's probably millions of more employees in the future. Once this Court reaches a decision, that- Why- why won't they be kept out by the principal purpose definition unless they really are the little sisters of the poor? They wouldn't be kept out any more than- than petitioners in this case would be. I mean, it would be the same. Well, that may be, but there's an issue as well. The petitioners in this case, which ones come in and which ones don't? Right. But I think really the point is that there's a lot- The answer is you don't know. Okay, so the- That's at least what I'm getting. I wanted to get a rough idea of the scope of the practical extent of the two interpretations. And I think the answer is you don't know. Well, I don't- We haven't- You don't have to know. All these cases haven't been litigated and I can't say- Okay, all of them- All of them- All of them- All of them- I want to know- Establishes the plan. The little sisters of the poor maintain it. On your definition, is it in or out? Uh, the exemption- or the exempt not? If the little sisters of the poor are under- I'm assuming they're a principal purpose organization. Yes, and it would be- Okay. Second purpose organization. The little sisters of the poor establish it. And the little sisters of the poor maintain it. On your definition, are they in or out- They're out because- Okay. Third in- it is established by a municipality, and it goes broke. and the little sisters of the poor say, we'll run the hospital. Inner out. Inner out of the exhibition. Kagan, I believe that would be out. Sotomayor, because you actually have to have the Catholic Church establishing itself. If it's established by the little sisters of the poor, it's out. Kagan, that's right. And the reason they put Congress in what Congress was most concerned about here was not going into the Church's books and records. These agencies, like the petitioners, their books and records are open to the public and political institutions, legitimate organizations like the, say, the little sisters of the poor really affiliated with the Church. You know, really affiliated with the Church, they do have a lot of evidence. If they really are part of the Church, I would add one other thing. Yes, really are part of the Church and there we have the first purpose. If they really are part of the Church and they can qualify as a Church, that's fine. They can't. This line between churches and Church agencies is one that gets drawn throughout the law, I get drawn, in seven or eight provisions of the U.S. I thought the whole purpose was to avoid that inquiry. Or that was the mistake that the IRS made. Is that it was saying these Church agencies were actually not part of the Church. I don't. Because they weren't engaged in sac or doodle or what other activities that the IRS thought characterized what a Church should be. I just don't think that that's what the problem was. The problem was that they were facing a 1982 deadline after which Church agencies would not have been able to be in a plan no matter who did what for anything

. Yes, and it would be- Okay. Second purpose organization. The little sisters of the poor establish it. And the little sisters of the poor maintain it. On your definition, are they in or out- They're out because- Okay. Third in- it is established by a municipality, and it goes broke. and the little sisters of the poor say, we'll run the hospital. Inner out. Inner out of the exhibition. Kagan, I believe that would be out. Sotomayor, because you actually have to have the Catholic Church establishing itself. If it's established by the little sisters of the poor, it's out. Kagan, that's right. And the reason they put Congress in what Congress was most concerned about here was not going into the Church's books and records. These agencies, like the petitioners, their books and records are open to the public and political institutions, legitimate organizations like the, say, the little sisters of the poor really affiliated with the Church. You know, really affiliated with the Church, they do have a lot of evidence. If they really are part of the Church, I would add one other thing. Yes, really are part of the Church and there we have the first purpose. If they really are part of the Church and they can qualify as a Church, that's fine. They can't. This line between churches and Church agencies is one that gets drawn throughout the law, I get drawn, in seven or eight provisions of the U.S. I thought the whole purpose was to avoid that inquiry. Or that was the mistake that the IRS made. Is that it was saying these Church agencies were actually not part of the Church. I don't. Because they weren't engaged in sac or doodle or what other activities that the IRS thought characterized what a Church should be. I just don't think that that's what the problem was. The problem was that they were facing a 1982 deadline after which Church agencies would not have been able to be in a plan no matter who did what for anything. And what they wanted to do some about that. What was the tenor of the hundreds and hundreds of letters that Congress received about what the IRS was doing? What did they understand the IRS to do? If you look at the 20, and I'm paid, I think, 10,054 or so of the Congressional record, I don't remember the volume number, but it's cited by Petitioners and by us. They are 20 letters that Senator Tomich put in the record. I looked at them. And of those six of them used the term internal revenue service. But the internal revenue service at that time was promulgating regulations. It's not about the little sisters of the poor. None of them mentioned that. In fact, there's no mention of the little sisters of the sisters who had the plan in New Jersey. There's no mention of that at all. Q. Are you saying that the only purpose of the amendment was to avoid the sunset provision? I think there were two purposes. I think there were two. I think there were two. The only purpose of the amendment was not the only purpose. That's what you just said a couple minutes ago. Excuse me, I didn't mean to say that. What I meant to say is the purpose of the C2 and C3 provisions, which was completely accomplished, was to get rid of the sunset provision. And these letters are overwhelmingly about the sunset provision. And every time Senator Tomich or anybody else said, well, we're, you know, the churches are, these churches are very closely tied to the church. They're really part of the church. But they are obviously willing to do something else, right? And that's what C1 is. And the other thing they wanted to do was what representative Carnival called a technical problem, which is they wanted to enable these congregational churches to maintain plans in a different way than they had been made, to maintain plans through this separate agency because that was the way they found it most convenient to do. And that actually explains this language of why they're talking in the first place about principal purpose agencies and why that doesn't apply to the churches can establish and maintain a plan and that's fine. Mr. Bellman, why do you think, I mean, I have read all your arguments about why the IRS letters are not entitled to difference. But I come at it from a different point, which is it wasn't part these private organizations, religious organizations, but the IRS, too, who was lobbying Congress to express itself on this issue and take care of what the IRS knew was a problem for all these people. And then all of a sudden, almost immediately after the legislation has passed, the IRS is believing and stating that it's done more than you claim. Isn't that in itself evidence, not the skidmore difference, but evidence that the agency believed that the answer was different than you're promoting right now? I, you know, the agency did believe the answer was different

. And what they wanted to do some about that. What was the tenor of the hundreds and hundreds of letters that Congress received about what the IRS was doing? What did they understand the IRS to do? If you look at the 20, and I'm paid, I think, 10,054 or so of the Congressional record, I don't remember the volume number, but it's cited by Petitioners and by us. They are 20 letters that Senator Tomich put in the record. I looked at them. And of those six of them used the term internal revenue service. But the internal revenue service at that time was promulgating regulations. It's not about the little sisters of the poor. None of them mentioned that. In fact, there's no mention of the little sisters of the sisters who had the plan in New Jersey. There's no mention of that at all. Q. Are you saying that the only purpose of the amendment was to avoid the sunset provision? I think there were two purposes. I think there were two. I think there were two. The only purpose of the amendment was not the only purpose. That's what you just said a couple minutes ago. Excuse me, I didn't mean to say that. What I meant to say is the purpose of the C2 and C3 provisions, which was completely accomplished, was to get rid of the sunset provision. And these letters are overwhelmingly about the sunset provision. And every time Senator Tomich or anybody else said, well, we're, you know, the churches are, these churches are very closely tied to the church. They're really part of the church. But they are obviously willing to do something else, right? And that's what C1 is. And the other thing they wanted to do was what representative Carnival called a technical problem, which is they wanted to enable these congregational churches to maintain plans in a different way than they had been made, to maintain plans through this separate agency because that was the way they found it most convenient to do. And that actually explains this language of why they're talking in the first place about principal purpose agencies and why that doesn't apply to the churches can establish and maintain a plan and that's fine. Mr. Bellman, why do you think, I mean, I have read all your arguments about why the IRS letters are not entitled to difference. But I come at it from a different point, which is it wasn't part these private organizations, religious organizations, but the IRS, too, who was lobbying Congress to express itself on this issue and take care of what the IRS knew was a problem for all these people. And then all of a sudden, almost immediately after the legislation has passed, the IRS is believing and stating that it's done more than you claim. Isn't that in itself evidence, not the skidmore difference, but evidence that the agency believed that the answer was different than you're promoting right now? I, you know, the agency did believe the answer was different. That is in the letters. There's no reasoning actually in those letters at all and insofar as there is any, it's wrong. Except they knew there was a problem. They thought or they assumed. And they were faced. They are wrongly. They assumed that this language fixed it and fixed it how they were describing it in these letters. They, they, they did interpret it the way they did. I wouldn't deny that they did that. But they, they'd give no reason for doing that. These were ex party letters. Every one of them up until the last couple of years was done on an ex party basis. The competitors had no chance to say, this is what we think. The employees had no chance to say, this is what we think. They didn't analyze the importance of a RISA provisions. They didn't analyze what would inevitably did happen, which is their six or seven church plans already that have failed and left the employees with nothing that had they been covered by a RISA they would have had PVGC insurance. The IRS didn't take any of that into account at all. And to, you know, they were just wrong in 1982. And in fact, it's hard to, it's clear one part that they're wrong that we talk about in their brief. But it's hard to see what other reasoning they have about why they didn't consider the practical consequences of this. They didn't consider the history of it. They didn't consider the relationships between the A and the C1 provision. They just didn't consider what any of the particular words of the statute meant. They really didn't do any of that. I would like to make one other point on, on, on reliance, which is, you know, this is about bringing these plans into compliance with a RISA. That shouldn't be a hard thing to do and a district court should be able to do it, giving them whatever period of time is reasonable. That's the overwhelming thing that's at issue here. And in fact, if, as they say, they haven't departed from a RISA that much, which we don't agree, believe, then it should be particularly easy to bring them into compliance with a RISA. The only two things that are backward looking at all are the civil damages, which I mentioned, and the fact that you may have to adjust some vesting schedules between three and five years, which is likely to be a minor problem

. That is in the letters. There's no reasoning actually in those letters at all and insofar as there is any, it's wrong. Except they knew there was a problem. They thought or they assumed. And they were faced. They are wrongly. They assumed that this language fixed it and fixed it how they were describing it in these letters. They, they, they did interpret it the way they did. I wouldn't deny that they did that. But they, they'd give no reason for doing that. These were ex party letters. Every one of them up until the last couple of years was done on an ex party basis. The competitors had no chance to say, this is what we think. The employees had no chance to say, this is what we think. They didn't analyze the importance of a RISA provisions. They didn't analyze what would inevitably did happen, which is their six or seven church plans already that have failed and left the employees with nothing that had they been covered by a RISA they would have had PVGC insurance. The IRS didn't take any of that into account at all. And to, you know, they were just wrong in 1982. And in fact, it's hard to, it's clear one part that they're wrong that we talk about in their brief. But it's hard to see what other reasoning they have about why they didn't consider the practical consequences of this. They didn't consider the history of it. They didn't consider the relationships between the A and the C1 provision. They just didn't consider what any of the particular words of the statute meant. They really didn't do any of that. I would like to make one other point on, on, on reliance, which is, you know, this is about bringing these plans into compliance with a RISA. That shouldn't be a hard thing to do and a district court should be able to do it, giving them whatever period of time is reasonable. That's the overwhelming thing that's at issue here. And in fact, if, as they say, they haven't departed from a RISA that much, which we don't agree, believe, then it should be particularly easy to bring them into compliance with a RISA. The only two things that are backward looking at all are the civil damages, which I mentioned, and the fact that you may have to adjust some vesting schedules between three and five years, which is likely to be a minor problem. Thank you, Council. Two minutes, Ms. Black. So I'm just going to start with the funding issue. The one thing that's polluced about C is that the church does not have to fund C1 plans because the statute explicitly allows the maintaining organization to fund it. And C1 moves maintenance outside the church, which means the church are absolutely off the hook. They also, they raised the dignity plan. The sponsoring congregations did establish those plans, and the other side argues the sponsoring congregations are not the church. And I guess that's because they're not priest. The other thing I would ask you to read is the brief by the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. They explain that the centralization that an establishment requirement would impose is anathema to their religious beliefs. And it's the same reason the maintenance is. It's a continuum, establishment and maintenance. Estallishment turns on day one, and then day two throughout time and memorial, they're being, the other side concedes you can maintain them. But the notion that there is some umbrella church for the Jews and the Protestants is just it's fantastical that could possibly establish these plans. The other thing I wanted to mention, the other side keeps talking about these closely tied joint plans. But the only other thing we know that's polluced about C is that an exempt plan can cover every single employee in this country for a religious nonprofit institution and not a single church employee needs to be in that plan. The other side is asking you to engage in a counterintuitive kind of weird thing that a church would set the dental plans and the vesting requirements for employees of a affiliated organization, especially in a place like the Jewish and Protestant religion. And that just is not credible. And finally on the anomalies, I mean, they have the anomalies of the pension board. They want to divorce the establishment from the maintenance. They have the anomaly that the nuns are left out in the cold. They have the anomaly of the YMCA, and I see my time is up, I don't want to finish or something. That the YMCA is the only religious organization in America that got this exemption. And they have this sort of silliness that a church would establish plans for someone else's employees. Thank you, council. The case is submitted.

We'll hear argument first this morning in case 1674 advocate health care network versus Stapleton and the consolidated case. Ms. Black? Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court. Pension plans for religious nonprofits have been exempt from Arissa for over 30 years, whether or not a church established the plan. In the contrary holding of the three courts below should be reversed for three reasons. First, the text does not require a church to establish benefit plans for someone else's employees. Second, the government's consistent view over three decades has generated enormous reliance interest and warrants' deference. And third, our firmments would resurrect the precise problems that everyone understood the 1980 amendment would fix. I could start with the text. And the main text that issue here is subparagraph C1 of section 102-33. And if you, the government's brief actually has all the relevant provisions, so I think that's the easiest if you want to look at the appendix. And C1 is reprinted on pages 11A. So again, we're looking at subparagraph C1 of paragraph 33, which everyone in this case agrees expands the original church plan definition in subparagraph A. Now the only plausible reason that C1 repeats the entire phrase, a plan established and maintained by a church, is Congress intended that C1 redefine and modify that entire phrase? Why? There was a provision that was proposed that would have done very clearly what you think this provision does now. And Congress didn't pass it. So an earlier version did exactly what you wanted. It said you can plan that establishes and or maintains by a church. It said established and maintained. And the problem, Justice Sotomayor, is that the assumption is incorrect that that provision did everything that folks wanted. It actually didn't. It excluded the very plans that everyone concedes was intended to be covered. The pen covered plans. Well, plans established by churches and maintained by somebody else. A plan established and maintained by a church includes a plan established and maintained by a church affiliated organization. Right. And that would have excluded, it would have excluded plans that were the church established and the pension board maintained. And the other side, I'm sorry, a plan established and maintained by a church, so that's any plan established by this is the old language, by the way. So- Right. So here- But that's any church plan, plus it defined includes a plan established and maintained by a church affiliated organization. Why is not a pension plan? Because the problem is that provision, the way it read, required the pension board to not only maintain it, but it would have had to establish it. And so that excluded, but- A plan established and maintained by a church affiliated organization. Right, but it said and. And so if the church established it, then it wouldn't have been a church plan established and maintained by a church. And it wouldn't have been a plan established and maintained by a pension board. So, and I think the clear thing in terms of this uninterrupt, I mean, the unpassed piece of legislation is it came out in the last couple of days of this several year process. And the change went unmentioned just to so to my ear. And it is, it's just implausible that that change, when I noticed, when it would have excluded all the plans that the religious community was up in arms about. And all the plans that prompted the amendment in the first place. But, there is a, there would be a simple way of accomplishing what you think this provision accomplishes, you know, something along the lines of just saying any plan maintained by a church affiliated organization is a church plan or something like that. It's, it's very odd language, this statutory language. And I'm wondering why you think that Congress chose to do what you think it chose to do in this perplexing way rather than in a straightforward way. Sure, I don't, I don't find it that that perplexing when your version would have messed up when you tried to, tried to put it all in 33A. It would have, by saying just a church plan, it would have redefined all of A, which had a second compound definition of it had to be a tax exempt under section 501. But just, just as Kay, let me cut to the chase here. If I had started from scratch, I don't know if I could have done this better. I doubt it because it's so complicated. But let's look at what actually happened in 1974. And how, just how different, see itself looks because remember, they started in 1974 and there wasn't A and there was a subparagraph C. And now we still have subparagraph C. So they were working with an existing apparatus. Now, old subparagraph C itself expressly required the church to establish C plans. And these C plans had to include the church's own actual employees. And Congress did two huge things in paragraph C now. It eliminated not only the express church establishment requirement, but the very reason for that requirement in the first place, namely that these plans include the church's own employees. So what we have now today, and I don't think this is disputed, we know. The one thing we do know is that C1 plans can be maintained, wholly and completely and absolutely outside the church, and can include solely, completely and wholly outside the church, all the employees of any tax exempt, religiously affiliated employer. So it just defies both common sense and our background understanding under Arissa to require the church to establish someone else's benefit plans when we know employers are usually the ones who set the employment benefits for their own employees. And then another problem with your reading, if this C1 seems to be predominantly about principal purpose organization. And I think the respondents suggest that you would like it to read as we produced on page 27 of their brief. You would like it to say, includes a plan maintained by an organization controlled by or associated with the church. But this provision seems to be giving authority to principal purpose organizations and not to entities controlled by or associated. Right. Well, you're absolutely right except for the point about how I would like it to read, because we like the way it reads now. What this does is it, and there's no question that our reading gives independent meaning to principal purpose organization. We can see that an absolute full requirement is that the plan must be maintained by an organization, whether external internal, that has its principal purpose, the administration or funding of a plan. But Justice Ginsburg, the definition of a principal purpose organization includes a plan for any employee of a church. An employee of a church is defined expressly in C2 to mean any employee, not of a church, namely any church affiliated tax exempt organization. So whether it's a pension board that's either sitting in the hospital or religious charity or it's a pension board that's externally incorporated, Congress made sure that the maintaining organization, the one with control over the funds and the administration itself has to be religiously affiliated. This is a tricky question, but is this the question that was decided by the courts of appeals and is it the question that we agreed to review? No. So on remand, they have an argument that assuming we win and that there's no formal requirement that the church establish the plan that the maintaining organization in this case, these retirement committees don't qualify. But I do think it's quite important to understand that Justice Ginsburg, when Congress was drafting this maintaining by a PPO or principal purpose organization, it was merely defining exactly what before and after 1980, and regardless of the church plan context, what every employment pension plan in America looks like, they're being maintained by either a separate retirement committee or a separately incorporated retirement committee. Now, what I think, Justice Alito, they were trying to say it's anomalous that a plan could be established by the hospital, but it has to be run by an internal committee that's either controlled or affiliated with the church. But the anomalies are exponentially monstrous on the other side. Justice Ginsburg, in their view, Congress entrusted a pension board to have control over all the administration and the funding, but didn't allow it to establish the plan, which is absurd given the historical context that pension boards were both establishing and maintaining. The other thing that's anomalous about their proposal is it leaves out in the cold, the nuns, and it assumes that Congress rebuffed every religious denomination in America who complained to Congress about how the IRS had been interpreting this provision. And so what the IRS had done in 1977 is it looked at a, it was attempting to define what constitutes a church. And the IRS ruled that because nuns were not, to cut two orders of Catholic nuns, were not the church when they were caring for the sick, their hospital plan could not be covered. Mr. Blatt, I'm putting aside that purpose. Do you think Congress had in mind a corporations that are essentially like every other corporation except they're not for profit? I mean, these hospitals, some of them like dignity, the Catholic Church has disavowed any formal affiliation with it. Well, let me just, sorry, go ahead. Do you think that I understand the nuns, but you're talking now about an extreme? Well, the nuns established dignity in a priest established St. Peter's or a bishop rather, so, but let me just get back to the plan at issue in 1977. None say that, but they no longer are affiliated with the church. I'm happy to argue the facts of dignity, and we can, I mean, that is an argument the other side on remand, but the place where Congress dealt with your concern about the institution that's not religious enough was not with establishment, but C4 requires any church plan that's being maintained by these affiliated organizations to have common bonds and common religious bonds and convictions. Now, dignity itself has that in spades. It has six orders, not one, not two, not three, not four, not five. Six orders of women religious running its mission, integrity committee. I'm not going to fight over that. Okay, well, dignity. But let's go back to my basic question. They're not doing anything different than any other hospital. Well, that's, that's- They are, or care center. They are competing. They're the fifth largest healthcare provider in the nation. They have 60,000 employees. Do you believe that Congress's vision was to let what is essentially a corporate entity out of protecting all of those employees? I mean, the Roman Catholic Church itself, I assume some sort of corporate entity, but let me get to the bottom line here. If you read Paul Clement's brief, filed by the Catholic Church itself, and the brief filed by the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the seventh day Adventist, that's four churches. Your decision applies to big and small, medium, extra religious, non-religious. So whatever you think of dignity, and I have no doubt that it's- It's both- It has both Catholic bonds and Catholic affiliations. But there's nothing about the size of this. We know Congress had in mind a hospital plan. The word hospital appears on every page of the legislative history. Ms. Blatt, I'd like to get to your question about the point you raised early on about the significance of the interpretation of the IRS, the pension benefit board, and who- What's the other one? The IRIS? The Department of Labor, IRS, and the pension benefit. What are the limits of that proposition? I mean, I don't quite understand you're saying because these three government agencies interpreted the statute one way, we shouldn't be more- We should be inclined to interpret it that way. Yes, I think that reliance is an important- Reason why you should defer under Schedmore. Well, I just- Maybe it's that I've never understood Schedmore. To me anyway, as it's been articulated, it seems to be the principle as you should defer to agencies when you agree with their interpretation. And I think that's- I don't see- Yeah, well, Schedmore says that- The statute means what it means, and it's nice that these agencies have interpreted it your way. But I think we have to go back and interpret the statute ourselves. Of course, but I mean, Schedmore is still a decision, and it says what you said, but it says anything you find persuasive. But the IRS- But why shouldn't it be persuasive? I mean, you've fallen, I think, the courts of appeals. You described their opinions as thinly reason, but that G.C.M. has started it all from the IRS, is certainly thinly reason. So let me go back to what our argument is under the IRS. They prompted the amendment by trying to say what a church was. Congress responded not by telling the IRS what the church was or that the nuns were the church, but by making that question irrelevant. The IRS objected, and immediately after the law was passed, started reverse course on the very non-planet issue here. But let me get to the reason about Schedmore, what this case is about. And just two of these cases, Mr. Chief Justice, the respondents seek $11 billion. I am not kidding, $11 billion per year. That's $66 billion in two cases if a RISC's six-year statute of limitations applies. The risk that the other side could recover, even any fraction of that amount, is reason enough for you to make sure that the IRS's decision is somehow unreasonable that would jettison 30 years of settled expectations. Well, quite a part from the IRS reasonable, the respondent says, tell this, there were, I assume hundreds of IRS letters. And it was because of this problem that Congress acted. Without getting into the legislative history, which I found totally uninformative, why is it that we can give so much weight to these letters when there was no notice and comment regulation? And tell me a little bit about how widespread and well understood the DOL position was. Well, they're all. And then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, says, oh, the, oh, the Congress never even knew about these letters, which sounds out to me, but. Congress, sir, I mean, every, every religious faith in America complained to Congress. Congress introduced the bills in response to the religious community. And immediately after, and the pension rights center, that's an amicus, was testifying, it's, it's, it's just, it's silly to think that they didn't have to use the internet, at least by whenever the internet came around, it couldn't figure out, or go to the library, it didn't, couldn't read a, a private letter ruling. But I think the significance is it's not just even the retroactive penalties. Countless plans have been structured around the IRS, the Department of Labor and the PBG's view. And if you affirm, just for all the existing plans that were not established, you're unleashing a torrent of undesirable unintended consequences, not just for the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, my question is, what can you point to to tell us that the IRS letters were an important part of the motivation for Congress to make this change? Okay, so it was the IRS's ruling under, for the 1977 Catholic nun plan. And 20, I think 20 letters and the church alliance representing over 27 denominations, 50 million people, complained bitterly to Congress. In the entire, I know you don't want to look at legislative history, but every single thing is about how hospitals and church agencies are part of an essential to the church. And the only way justice Kennedy to interpret that is that they were talking about the IRS's definition that because nuns were not performing priestly functions, they weren't the church. And I just think, so the IRS was at the table, the IRS is objecting, the IRS goes home and starts immediately reversing course. And you have the fact that the, I mean, we've talked about the IRS. The other side concedes that another major purpose was to put congregational religions on parity with hierarchical congregations. And we know that the 1974 Act excluded these pension board established and maintained plans. And under respondents interpretations, these plans too were left out in the cold. We know it's the 1900s, these Protestant pension boards were not only maintaining plans, they established, but plans that their church agencies had established. If I could reserve the rest of my time. Thank you, council. Mr. Stewart? Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court. I'd like to first pick up on a point that Ms. Black alluded to when she was describing the history of the statute and its amendment. I think the statute in its current form is probably not the type of provision that Congress would draft if it were doing the whole thing in one fell swoop. But it's important to understand that the text of the current provision is the combination of things that were done in 1974 and things that were done in 1980. Congress enacted the original church plan provision, presumably it had in mind particular plans that were established and maintained by churches and it covered those. And pretty quickly problems came to light. Other types of plans were found not to be covered by the administrative agency that Congress evidently believed should be covered. And so when Congress amended the provision in 1980, it chose to work within the existing framework. We're not quite sure why, but at least one plausible explanation would be there were some church plans that had been found to be covered under the old established and maintained by a church language. Congress made it wanted to avoid any possible inference that those plans were no longer covered and so it retained the original language but defined it to include something else. And when Congress passed the provision that Ms. Black was discussing earlier, C1 that refers to a plan established and maintained for its employees, includes a plan maintained by a principal purpose organization. I think it's helpful to recognize that there are two different sorts of definitional provisions that Congress sometimes enact. Sometimes when Congress and acts a definition, it's trying to clarify what the defined term really means. And when Congress acts in that way, we tend to strain to read the definition in a way that makes it consistent with ordinary understandings of the defined term. But sometimes Congress will enact a provision that says something like the purposes of this statute, the term state includes the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. When Congress does that, it's not trying to explain what state really means. It's simply using a shorthand formulation to say, for purposes of this statute, we want DC and Puerto Rico to be treated the same way that the 50 states would be treated. And that's really what Congress was doing in the 1980 amendment. When it defined the term plan established and maintained by a church to include plans that satisfied the prerequisites in the amendments, it was not saying this is what a plan established and maintained by a church really is. It was saying, for purposes of the church plan exemption, we want these to be treated the same. Mr. Stewart, can I ask you about some of the respondents' hypotheticals. Were they offer hypothetical statutes that are very similar in structure to this one? And it's pretty clear that you would read the ones about disabled veterans and the one about the two presidential criteria. And it's pretty clear that you would read those sentences their way rather than your way. In other words, it's just going to one of the criteria. And I'm wondering why you think that's true, that they can come up with these hypotheticals that so clearly should be interpreted their way rather than your way. I guess I would say about the hypothetical that is used most often, person disabled and a veteran includes a member of the National Guard. I think if you read it absolutely, literally, you would still say a National Guard member who is not disabled is covered. Now, I think- I mean, that would seem ridiculous, right? I think the instinct that the context would be such that courts would assume, I believe that Congress had simply made a sort of Scrivener's error, that Congress had used language sloppily. Part of that has to do with the instinct that I alluded to earlier. That is, we would tend to regard a provision like that as one in which Congress was really trying to explain what the term person who is disabled and a veteran means. And so we would strain to read the definition in a way that made it consistent. If Congress passed a statute that said something like person who is disabled and a veteran shall include any federal employee with 30 years or more of service. At that point, we would understand Congress has just abandoned the effort to explain what person who is disabled and a veteran actually means. It is decided for whatever reason that it wants employees with a federal employees with unusually long service to get the same benefits as a disabled veteran would get under a particular statute and as you shorthand to accomplish that. I would think that the way that hypothetical works. It is sort of, we are setting these two criteria, you have to be a veteran and you have to be disabled. And then we are going to say there is a special case of veterans. We also mean to include national guard folks and that is not disqualifying the fact that it is a national guard folks, but the two criteria are still the two criteria. All we are suggesting is that it is not disqualifying that you are a national guard. And you could read this language similarly. It is not disqualifying that it is maintained by a different kind of organization. I guess all I would concede based on these hypotheticals is that sometimes a provision that is structured in this way will give rise to the natural inference that Congress wanted to do something other than simply a particular thing to fall within the whole defined term. And it had in mind a part. But I think in constricting this provision it may be helpful to look at page 24 of the government's brief, which explains, which kind of clarifies something that Ms. Black was referring to earlier, that on page 24 of the government's brief we lay out the way in which this amendment changed from the time it was first introduced in 1979 to when it was enacted in 1980. And as the questioning in the first part of the argument explained, the original introduced provision said, a plan established and maintained by a church shall include a plan established and maintained by a principal purpose organization. And so the words established and appeared two places in that introduced provision. And as we agree with Ms. Black, that the most likely explanation for what by Congress took out the second established and was that it was worried about plans that would fall between two stools, a plan that was established by a church but maintained by a principal purpose organization. The hypothetical would be like this case or this case would be like the hypothetical, if the requirement that the plan be established by the church was absolutely critical as the requirement that the individual have a disability is absolutely critical in the hypothetical, which gets to the question, what is the significance in practical terms of a plan being established by a church? Now, Mr. Feldman says that an entity that establishes a plan is financially responsible for paying benefits under the plan if the plan is unable to do that with its assets. But you say that's not correct, is that right? That's not correct. I mean, in the typical aristocrat case, you will have a plan established and maintained by a single employer and that employer will be responsible for making good on the promises and that employer may be a defendant in a suit if the promises are breached. But that doesn't mean that the entity that establishes the plan quite established is always going to be on the hook. Sometimes on the hook? Sometimes on the hook, if the established maintains ongoing responsibility. But there's no reason to think even if you applied a RISA standards that a church that established the plan but then left the administration of the plan entirely in the hands of somebody else could be held liable under a RISA. But second, the whole point of the church plan exemption is that plans that qualify will not be regulated under a RISA at all, they will be regulated under state law. So if a church in order to satisfy this requirement established the plan and then left its maintenance to somebody else, whether the church would have any ongoing liability would depend on state laws that might vary around the country. So, could you tell me what provision of a RISA? I'll ask Mr. Feldman the same thing if I have a chance. What provision of a RISA explains which entity, if any, is responsible for paying benefits if, for example, a defined benefit plan is unable to do that with the assets in the plan? I don't believe there is a provision of a RISA that spells that out. My understanding, and I'm sorry I don't have the statutory site, is that there is a provision of a RISA that authorizes the plan beneficiaries to sue, but it doesn't specify who the defendant should be. And so the courts have devised tests and approaches to determine in particular cases who the proper defendant is. And to some extent, that will depend upon the way the plan itself is constructed. That is, the plan may say that the responsibility for doing certain things is that of the employer, for doing other things that may be that of the insurer. And so the proper defendant may determine on where responsibility is allocated under the terms of the plan. But so I agree that one big difference between this case and the hypotheticals is that the hypothetical is constructed in a way that suggests disability has to be crucial to entitlement to benefits. Whereas here, there's no reason to think that Congress in 1980, regarded church establishment as crucial to the exemption. And the point I was trying to make about was going to make about, but I guess that's the question, right? And the structure is the same. I guess the point I was going to make about, if I could finish this, about the way in which the statute changed from introduction to final passage is that everyone agrees that Congress could have more clearly achieved the objective that respondent says they were trying to achieve. If it had said, a plan maintained by a church includes a plan maintained by a principal purpose organization. And so the idea seems to be, Congress was just a little bit careless in leaving in established and maintained at the beginning. That seems particularly implausible given the care they took to knock out the second iteration of established and in the same provision. Thank you, Council. Mr. Felden. Mr. Felden, I have a starting question, which is, I'm torn. This could be read either way in my mind. If I believe that, what do I go to to break the tie? I think if you look at what Congress was trying, this is what I would say. If you accept their view, what you end up with is a statute that doesn't fit what Congress enacted at all and creates anomalies that are impossible to explain. And for those reasons, at least, as well as the fact that Congress was very jealous about creating exemptions to a RISSA. A RISSA covers every private employer, every non-profit, every hospital in the country. And there's only one category except there's only one category excluded. And that's church plans. And Congress actually defined church plans carefully. They wanted a close tie between the church and the plan because their purpose was they didn't want to go involved in getting involved in church affairs. And so they said, church plan has to be established and maintained by a church. It needs to fit both criteria because we want, if there's church involvement here, we want hands off. If there's no church involvement, though, there's no reason why these hospitals, like any other hospital in the country, and like many other, every other firm in the country, shouldn't have to provide the employees with the pension insurance to protect them against the possibility that when the plan goes bust, they end up with nothing. Isn't there, didn't Congress provide for church involvement by making the employees covered by the principal purpose entity? Church employees? No, it's actually, well, I would just, no, it didn't actually, the, the, that statute actually doesn't say anything about the principal purpose entity. So there's three different kinds of things we're talking about here. There are churches themselves. There's principal purpose organizations, which are organizations that are in the business of just giving a point to the church agency employees. Right. And the church, it, what it said was, yes, it's, it was facing a problem in 1980, which was the original statute said, if you're a church, you can cover not only your own employees, but you can also cover the employees of your church agencies. That's what the original statute said, but only until 1982. And that is what everybody was objecting to. And that's why people were, people were objecting to the withdrawal of that sunset provision that was going to happen in 1982. And the reason why they were talking about agencies are very closely related to churches. That was not, it was not to say, their view is the Congress wanted to allow fission. They wanted these agencies to split up, these plans to split apart. And the agency to have their own plan and the church to have their own plan, that's what they wanted. But it's exactly the opposite. They wanted to allow churches to continue as they had been to provide, to have a plan that would cover both the church's employees and the agencies employees. And they were interested in continued fusion. They weren't interested in fission. And actually there's nobody anywhere who talked about this statute who said, well, what we really need is to allow another whole class of private entities to establish their own plans. So in the provision that you're going to refer to, they say, well, the employees of the church associated agency will be deemed to be employees of the churches. Congress passed that provision to solve exactly the 1982 problem. Okay, a church plan has to be established and maintained by a church. This is in A, which was left unchanged. Established and maintained by a church for its employees. And then in the original statute, they said, well, we don't really care who's employees they are, but you can also cover the church agency. But if that were so evident, why do the three government agencies responsible in this area, the IRS, the Department of Labor, the PBG, see why for 30 years did they take the opposite view? Well, it's, they took this view at the early 1980s at a time when they were facing one or two. I'm not sure they knew at the time when they started down this road what it was going to lead to in terms of the hundreds of hospitals and other businesses that are going to be able to just deprive their employees of a recipient. But it led to hundreds of letters from the IRS. Is that an exaggeration or is that hundreds of IRS letters approving? And actually the first, the mother of them all, which was the General Counsel Memorandum from 8283, it says, this may not be relied upon or cited as precedent. And the statute that authorized all these private letter rulings, which were all done on an ex-party basis and without the opportunity. But nevertheless, it shows that an entity that had one of these plans that were there was summed out was proceeding in good faith with the insurance, with the assurance of the IRS that what they were doing was lawful. Yes. And that entitled them to exactly what it was supposed. The government has that this may not be relied upon language because it didn't want to be bound to this. That standard language in a private letter ruling, isn't it? Yes. Okay. So the other letter varies. So when this goes on and on, quite with the reference to the legislative history of which Senator said what, which I think is unhelpful, we do know that the climate, the culture, the economic problem after 30 years was that many of these associations which had proceeded in good faith based on the IRS were at risk of tremendous liability. And that's certainly a reason for understanding A. Y. Congress acted and B. The problem it wanted to solve in the way the petitioner said it did. You're on, I don't think that that's right. So these cases are about primarily overwhelmingly forward looking remedies. They're about bringing these plans into accord with the RISA. Degetting insurance for these plans so that their employees can be sure that they get their benefits when they're supposed to get it. Wasn't this plan incorrect when she said that the complaints seek billions of dollars in penalties? Right. We don't know all the facts of these cases, but I, what was the answer to my question? Yes. Well, they, they don't actually, I don't believe they name a dollar figure for the penalty. Well, they, if you figured out the penalties, would they be billions of dollars? No one has ever, I'll- And how can you say that this is primarily about forward looking things? Because I think that everybody admits in this case, not only everybody admits, the statute, the authority to issue penalties is in the district court's discretion. And the, nobody has ever, no court has ever, I don't think, issued, had a RISA penalty close to that. And this court has repeatedly emphasized that when you're addressing a remedy under 502A3 or 502C3, you're supposed to take into account the equities of the situation. So if you- And one equity would be the reliance. One, a court might well say, well, we need to statute the way the courts of appeals have, but we're not going to give you any retrospective relief because you legitimately, in good faith, rely. I completely agree. The good faith of the party is actually- I understand that, but I mean, you said that this is primarily- Well, don't worry about the penalties. This is primarily about forward looking things. And yet, the complaints ask for the penalties. Are you willing on behalf of your clients to disavow any requests for penalties? No, I'm not. And how can you say that it's primarily about forward looking? Because- I mean, I can say that because we don't know the facts of this case. I'm willing to say that if all the facts suggested that they acted in good faith throughout and just made a mistake, and they couldn't have been expected to do anything else, then I would think they wouldn't be awarding the penalty. Well, they had the penalty. Whatever reliance was reasonable based on these hundreds of letters. That's one thing. How about relying on the literal meaning of the central statutory provision? Yes. And I think that the literal meaning of that as all three courts of appeals unanimously agreed, the literal meaning of that was, this is not a standalone statute that says, you know, there are statutes in the U.S. code that say that don't define a term. And then they say, but a felony includes something or other. Okay, they don't define felony. They just say a felony includes something or other. That's one kind of statute. And then courts are supposed to figure out what else a felony includes. But this statute doesn't do that. And in fact, the language at the beginning of C1 of plan established and maintained by a church, ties it to this, you actually can't read C1 as a standalone statute because it wouldn't make any sense. Well, I'm talking about the literal language of C1. And you're now talking about everything else. The literal language of C1 says a plan established and maintained by a church includes a plan that is maintained by a principal purpose organization. And it's as simple as that that read literally it is not required that it be established and by a church. Now, you have other arguments. But I just, you're on our respectfully disagree. The Court, if the Court has said one thing more often than anything else in the context of statute or interpretation, it's that you have to read things in context and you have to read statutes as a whole. And this C1 has language that ties it directly back to A, which Congress said in 1980, we are retaining A the way it is. And I think you have to read them both together. If you read them both together, what you say, the basic form is whether it's the example of the disabled veterans, the President or the examples that they given the reply brief. The basic form of this is if you have a statute that says, here's a rule that applies to A and B. And then it says A and B includes a particular kind of B, which is what this says, right? Establish and maintain includes a particular kind of maintenance. Then that is naturally taken to mean, well, we're expanding or clarifying the B, but we're not doing anything to the A. Why would you repeat the requirement of the A? In other words, Congress could have just said a plan maintained by a church includes a plan maintained by one of these organizations. And that's another way of asking the question is under your interpretation, established and have no function. I actually don't think that that's quite right. They could have worded this other ways. They certainly could have worded this statute many other ways to accomplish respondent position, petitioner's position, position. But the point of repeating that language was directly to tie it, it was one way, to directly tie it back into A and say, okay, now we're talking about these things, we're going to include a particular kind of B. Now that is one thing to notice, it's not B'd, it doesn't say, I mean, petitioner's having no answer for this at all. Why Congress wanted to require them to have a principal purpose organization at all, churches don't have to have that. And why did Congress trust them to establish their own plans and then say, but we actually you can establish your plans, dignity, hospital. But you don't have to maintain the plan, you can't maintain, we are prohibiting you from maintaining your plan. And you have to go to a principal, an agency that's principally involved in dealing with employee benefits that otherwise satisfies the requirements. And you have to have them maintain it. And there's no- From your perspective, what is the practical significance of requiring that the, excuse me, plans be established by a church? I think the practical significance is Congress's purpose here, and again, I don't think this is a dispute and there's no other purpose that's been suggested, was hands off the church. If a church is involved with a plan, we don't, we don't, we want to have, leave them the freedom to be outside of a rissa. But there's no church involved, when there's no church involved, as there is in this case, the church has no direction involved. I think you can with that. And the church is involved to the extent, the law says that the principal purpose agency is maintaining that fund for people who are defined to be church employees. But there- The church is not involved in that situation before. No, actually, I think you can, but what I'm saying is the church itself, these employees who are so defined are actually employees of the church agency. But the church itself has no- The church's zero involvement with this plan. There's nothing that says the church will be deemed to have established the plan or the church. These plans have zero involvement with any church. But they have involvement with the church agency, right? They do. And so I thought the whole concern with the original IRS problem was that the IRS was treating church agencies as if they were not engaged in a church function. No, they were saying, okay, the church has an agency whose mission is to feed the hungry, clothenegid, all of that, and the IRS was saying, well, that's not a church. It's got nothing to do with it. And now it's changed. And those individuals who are engaged in that social mission are treated as members of the church agency. They are treated that way so that the church agency- The church agency. They are doing that so that the church can include them in its plan if they want it. And that, if the church wants to do that, that's fine, and they can do that. But they're not, the point of that provision was to eliminate the 1982 cutoff. The wouldn't have allowed the church to continue to do that. And the church- Let's go to that 1982. Tell me how your reading of this statute includes the organizations that were clamoring and for whom the IRS had said were covered by this provision. The pension boards that were separate from the church and Ms. Blatt pointed to the sisters, the nuns who were also seeking coverage. How does your reading take care of those two situations facing Congress? I think it actually perfectly matches with those two situations. The C2 and C3 provisions, as I said, they allowed churches to continue if they wanted to cover church agencies eliminated the 1982 cutoff that people were concerned about. The C1 provision said that was not a provision about let's drastically expand the types of entities that are, and by millions of employees, the types of employees who don't have a risk of protection. This was what Representative Carnival termed a technical. But I would have thought that the one thing that seems most clear from a pretty murky legislative history is the church pension boards were supposed to be included in this. And the church pension boards, some of them, were established, their plans were established by the church, some of them not. So you would be taking out some of these church pension boards that I thought are the sort of quintessential group that this was designed to include. I really disagree with the premise of that. If you look back, you know, there is nothing in the legislative history that said, or anybody, there's, let me say this correctly, you know, there's a few stray references in letters from pension boards saying, yeah, we established a plan. But we actually go over each of the ones in our brief and each of the ones that they cite. And they're actually Congress had no, that was not the way they operated then, it's actually not the way they operate now. The way they operate is, these are for congregation churches primarily. And in a congregational type of setup, you have an assembly or synod of the church itself. And this is just an assembly of all the local churches and they will establish the plans. They don't have the audience to ask what does it mean to establish a plan. If establishing is all important in your view of it. So I didn't see any statutory definition of what it takes to establish a plan. And as this courts for Halifax case, I think establishes, it means making a commitment to provide some kind of reasonably definite benefits to some employees, you know, reasonably well-defined. That's what it means. If you don't make that commitment, if you say if the church said, we want somebody else to have a plan and laid out what the terms would be, actually the church would definitely not have established a plan. It would be somebody else who if they took them up on it would. But for the church to establish a plan means it, in this case is actually the dignity cases of perfect example. The district court, it's not, it's usually a difficult inquiry. The district court here found, and if you look around page 56, A, of the cert petition appendix in the dignity case, the district court said, well, who established this plan? Well, dignity, the hospital, they passed a corporate resolution and adopted a summary, the appropriate corporate officers adopted a summary plan description. And they established the plan and that committed dignity to doing certain things. And it wasn't somebody else who did it. And that's usually what that inquiry is. You need some kind of commitment. Now, Congress, when that kind of commitment was made by a church, Congress said we want hands off, and they had good reasons for doing it. It's very much like in the tax code, there's numerous other places where you have to distinguish which between churches and church agencies in Section 26, UIC, 7, 6, 11, gives churches quite extraordinary protection against audits, against the circumstances under which they can be audited, the types of things that can be looked at, and the rights they have during the audit. It applies only to churches and not to agencies. And the principle was the same principle here is, we don't want the government looking into the books and records of churches. And I think that was from the situation where the church establishes the plan. And then turns over the maintenance of the plan to a principle purpose organization. The audits would be the books of the principle purpose organization. They wouldn't be very much to look for in the records of the church. So if that was the purpose of it, I don't see what the establishment required. I would think that it's more than just looking at the books and records at that particular time. When the church is establishing a plan, it's making some kind of commitment of what kind of benefits who's going to get and when. That's what it means to establish a plan and how it's going to be funded. And- Well, you say, where do I look to find that? And where do I look to find the provision that says what you say, which is that the entity that establishes a plan is financially responsible? The financial, it's financially responsible to the extent that what it says when it establish the plan. I mean, I suppose, especially if it's not so, it's for a reasonable, limited, liable- It's responsible to the extent the plan makes it responsible, is that the answer? It's- It's- It's- Under a risk of plans can't limit their liability. But I mean, the- the- the person- parties establishing plans can't. But under- if it's not an over-risk of plan, they probably can have provisions that they're only going to give you what's- the money that's in the plan. But they still have to make a commitment and that would be governed- I suppose presumably in the case of a non-arrisk of plan by State law. But- Where is the provision of a RISSA that supports what you said, which is- it seems to me to be a significant point, that the entity that establishes the plan is financially responsible for the plan. What is the provision of a RISSA? It makes sense, that. It's- I think it's- I can't cite it to you right now, the- the number, but it's the provision that says you have to carry out the terms of a plan and what a plan. I thought Mr. Stewart suggested the opposite. No, and he- I don't think so. I think he said the employees can sue- if it's a RISSA plan, you can sue under 502 for whatever the benefits are that you've been promised. But- It's sue the entity establishing it or the person- or the entity maintaining the plan. You could- you could- first of all, frequently they're the same. But if they're different, it certainly- Well, in this case- In this case, they're not, right? In this case, I think they are actually. Well, you're talking about- I thought the principal- purpose agency is the one- But the principle- the principle- the principle- the internal committee of- of petitioners. So I don't think there would be any difference in suing- you think you would sue petitioners. That's all- there wouldn't- there's nobody else to sue. But I- I guess you would sue both of them, actually. But if I could- Is it- Can a internal committee of a church affiliated organization, qualified as a principal- purpose organization? We believe that it can't. And in fact, there would be no reason at all for Congress to have- we acquired, according to my friend, Congress wanted to be sure that whoever's maintaining the plan. There's somebody who's associated with the church. But there was no reason to talk about principal- purpose employee benefit organizations that are primarily involved in- employee benefits if that's what you wanted to accomplish. The- the- this makes sense if you look at it as something that congregational denominations were doing as of 1980, which is they founded convenient to have the maintenance of the plan done by a organization that was an employee benefits organization. And nobody objected to that. They said, that's fine, Mr. Halperin didn't object to it. Nobody did. That's fine if you wanted. If that's a convenient way- they were talking about how to run a plan, not opening up the plan to a broad range, not opening up the exemption to a broad range of plans and probably millions of employees. And just back- Why? B. C. How many- how many- how many employees did come in under the IRS interpretation for 30 years that wouldn't have come in had the IRS followed yours, if you know? About- I- I just rough it. I would assume all of them. No, no. I mean, I'd like to get a rough idea of what you're talking about because your argument practically depends on if we keep following the IRS interpretation. There'll be vast numbers of plans that come in that wouldn't otherwise. They followed it for 30 years. I'd like to get a rough and pure good idea of how many have come in because they didn't accept your interpretation. How many employees are- B. C. Are our exempt that wouldn't have otherwise been? Right. They say that there are a million employees that have been in these plans. Actually, though, there's probably millions of more employees in the future. Once this Court reaches a decision, that- Why- why won't they be kept out by the principal purpose definition unless they really are the little sisters of the poor? They wouldn't be kept out any more than- than petitioners in this case would be. I mean, it would be the same. Well, that may be, but there's an issue as well. The petitioners in this case, which ones come in and which ones don't? Right. But I think really the point is that there's a lot- The answer is you don't know. Okay, so the- That's at least what I'm getting. I wanted to get a rough idea of the scope of the practical extent of the two interpretations. And I think the answer is you don't know. Well, I don't- We haven't- You don't have to know. All these cases haven't been litigated and I can't say- Okay, all of them- All of them- All of them- All of them- I want to know- Establishes the plan. The little sisters of the poor maintain it. On your definition, is it in or out? Uh, the exemption- or the exempt not? If the little sisters of the poor are under- I'm assuming they're a principal purpose organization. Yes, and it would be- Okay. Second purpose organization. The little sisters of the poor establish it. And the little sisters of the poor maintain it. On your definition, are they in or out- They're out because- Okay. Third in- it is established by a municipality, and it goes broke. and the little sisters of the poor say, we'll run the hospital. Inner out. Inner out of the exhibition. Kagan, I believe that would be out. Sotomayor, because you actually have to have the Catholic Church establishing itself. If it's established by the little sisters of the poor, it's out. Kagan, that's right. And the reason they put Congress in what Congress was most concerned about here was not going into the Church's books and records. These agencies, like the petitioners, their books and records are open to the public and political institutions, legitimate organizations like the, say, the little sisters of the poor really affiliated with the Church. You know, really affiliated with the Church, they do have a lot of evidence. If they really are part of the Church, I would add one other thing. Yes, really are part of the Church and there we have the first purpose. If they really are part of the Church and they can qualify as a Church, that's fine. They can't. This line between churches and Church agencies is one that gets drawn throughout the law, I get drawn, in seven or eight provisions of the U.S. I thought the whole purpose was to avoid that inquiry. Or that was the mistake that the IRS made. Is that it was saying these Church agencies were actually not part of the Church. I don't. Because they weren't engaged in sac or doodle or what other activities that the IRS thought characterized what a Church should be. I just don't think that that's what the problem was. The problem was that they were facing a 1982 deadline after which Church agencies would not have been able to be in a plan no matter who did what for anything. And what they wanted to do some about that. What was the tenor of the hundreds and hundreds of letters that Congress received about what the IRS was doing? What did they understand the IRS to do? If you look at the 20, and I'm paid, I think, 10,054 or so of the Congressional record, I don't remember the volume number, but it's cited by Petitioners and by us. They are 20 letters that Senator Tomich put in the record. I looked at them. And of those six of them used the term internal revenue service. But the internal revenue service at that time was promulgating regulations. It's not about the little sisters of the poor. None of them mentioned that. In fact, there's no mention of the little sisters of the sisters who had the plan in New Jersey. There's no mention of that at all. Q. Are you saying that the only purpose of the amendment was to avoid the sunset provision? I think there were two purposes. I think there were two. I think there were two. The only purpose of the amendment was not the only purpose. That's what you just said a couple minutes ago. Excuse me, I didn't mean to say that. What I meant to say is the purpose of the C2 and C3 provisions, which was completely accomplished, was to get rid of the sunset provision. And these letters are overwhelmingly about the sunset provision. And every time Senator Tomich or anybody else said, well, we're, you know, the churches are, these churches are very closely tied to the church. They're really part of the church. But they are obviously willing to do something else, right? And that's what C1 is. And the other thing they wanted to do was what representative Carnival called a technical problem, which is they wanted to enable these congregational churches to maintain plans in a different way than they had been made, to maintain plans through this separate agency because that was the way they found it most convenient to do. And that actually explains this language of why they're talking in the first place about principal purpose agencies and why that doesn't apply to the churches can establish and maintain a plan and that's fine. Mr. Bellman, why do you think, I mean, I have read all your arguments about why the IRS letters are not entitled to difference. But I come at it from a different point, which is it wasn't part these private organizations, religious organizations, but the IRS, too, who was lobbying Congress to express itself on this issue and take care of what the IRS knew was a problem for all these people. And then all of a sudden, almost immediately after the legislation has passed, the IRS is believing and stating that it's done more than you claim. Isn't that in itself evidence, not the skidmore difference, but evidence that the agency believed that the answer was different than you're promoting right now? I, you know, the agency did believe the answer was different. That is in the letters. There's no reasoning actually in those letters at all and insofar as there is any, it's wrong. Except they knew there was a problem. They thought or they assumed. And they were faced. They are wrongly. They assumed that this language fixed it and fixed it how they were describing it in these letters. They, they, they did interpret it the way they did. I wouldn't deny that they did that. But they, they'd give no reason for doing that. These were ex party letters. Every one of them up until the last couple of years was done on an ex party basis. The competitors had no chance to say, this is what we think. The employees had no chance to say, this is what we think. They didn't analyze the importance of a RISA provisions. They didn't analyze what would inevitably did happen, which is their six or seven church plans already that have failed and left the employees with nothing that had they been covered by a RISA they would have had PVGC insurance. The IRS didn't take any of that into account at all. And to, you know, they were just wrong in 1982. And in fact, it's hard to, it's clear one part that they're wrong that we talk about in their brief. But it's hard to see what other reasoning they have about why they didn't consider the practical consequences of this. They didn't consider the history of it. They didn't consider the relationships between the A and the C1 provision. They just didn't consider what any of the particular words of the statute meant. They really didn't do any of that. I would like to make one other point on, on, on reliance, which is, you know, this is about bringing these plans into compliance with a RISA. That shouldn't be a hard thing to do and a district court should be able to do it, giving them whatever period of time is reasonable. That's the overwhelming thing that's at issue here. And in fact, if, as they say, they haven't departed from a RISA that much, which we don't agree, believe, then it should be particularly easy to bring them into compliance with a RISA. The only two things that are backward looking at all are the civil damages, which I mentioned, and the fact that you may have to adjust some vesting schedules between three and five years, which is likely to be a minor problem. Thank you, Council. Two minutes, Ms. Black. So I'm just going to start with the funding issue. The one thing that's polluced about C is that the church does not have to fund C1 plans because the statute explicitly allows the maintaining organization to fund it. And C1 moves maintenance outside the church, which means the church are absolutely off the hook. They also, they raised the dignity plan. The sponsoring congregations did establish those plans, and the other side argues the sponsoring congregations are not the church. And I guess that's because they're not priest. The other thing I would ask you to read is the brief by the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. They explain that the centralization that an establishment requirement would impose is anathema to their religious beliefs. And it's the same reason the maintenance is. It's a continuum, establishment and maintenance. Estallishment turns on day one, and then day two throughout time and memorial, they're being, the other side concedes you can maintain them. But the notion that there is some umbrella church for the Jews and the Protestants is just it's fantastical that could possibly establish these plans. The other thing I wanted to mention, the other side keeps talking about these closely tied joint plans. But the only other thing we know that's polluced about C is that an exempt plan can cover every single employee in this country for a religious nonprofit institution and not a single church employee needs to be in that plan. The other side is asking you to engage in a counterintuitive kind of weird thing that a church would set the dental plans and the vesting requirements for employees of a affiliated organization, especially in a place like the Jewish and Protestant religion. And that just is not credible. And finally on the anomalies, I mean, they have the anomalies of the pension board. They want to divorce the establishment from the maintenance. They have the anomaly that the nuns are left out in the cold. They have the anomaly of the YMCA, and I see my time is up, I don't want to finish or something. That the YMCA is the only religious organization in America that got this exemption. And they have this sort of silliness that a church would establish plans for someone else's employees. Thank you, council. The case is submitted

Legal Case Summary

Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton

Date Argued: Mon Mar 27 2017

Case Number: 16-74

Docket Number: 4667282

Judges:Not available

Duration: 63 minutes

Court Name: Supreme Court

Case Summary

Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton

Oral Audio Transcript(Beta version)