[00:00:04] Speaker 01:
The United States court of appeals for the federal circuit is now open and in session.

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God save the United States and this honorable court.

[00:00:15] Speaker 05:
The court will hear argument in number 20-2168 Snyder versus McDonough.

[00:00:22] Speaker 05:
Ms.

[00:00:23] Speaker 05:
Sajak, whenever you're ready.

[00:00:26] Speaker 00:
Thank you, your honor.

[00:00:28] Speaker 00:
Good afternoon and may it please the court.

[00:00:30] Speaker 00:
My name is Jennifer Sajak and along with my co-counsel, Linda Blahoo,

[00:00:34] Speaker 00:
We represent the veteran, Joseph J. Snyder Sr., in his pursuit of veteran benefits based on service connection for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALF, on a presumptive basis.

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Congress is the only entity who can decide who is a veteran, the different classes of veterans, and whether there are restrictions on what benefits the different classes can receive.

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Mr. Snyder is a veteran.

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Yet the VA decided he is not eligible for a presumption that would mean everything to him and his family.

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While the Secretary absolutely has the discretion to create a generous presumption, as he is here for ALS, he does not have the discretion to exclude classes of veterans if Congress has not sent so.

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We are here today then for the court to answer the following questions.

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Did the secretary overstep his general rulemaking authority by inserting a 90-day service requirement into 38 CFR 3.318?

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Two, did the secretary overstep his authority by failing to provide a rational basis for the 90-day service requirement in light of the utter lack of knowledge of what causes this disease in 90% of the population?

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And three, did the Veterans Court err when it held that Bowers was dispositive?

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This is Judge Toronto.

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Can I ask you this question?

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Suppose that either the Institute of Medicine or White's Cough had a clear scientific basis for saying veterans who served less than 90 days or less show no higher rate of ALS than background population.

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so that it would be reasonable for the secretary when creating a presumption to exclude that class.

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Is your argument about the veteran character, would that argument still hold even if it was substantively reasonable to exclude the under 91 day group of veterans?

[00:02:50] Speaker 00:
We believe so, Your Honor, because the 90-day aspect of it, and if science supported that there needed to be the 90 days, only goes to the rational basis.

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The fact of, as far as whether he could choose 90 days or not, like the number, but whether he can make these classes at all, that goes to the general rulemaking authority to begin with.

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And that ability is not within Section 503-C.

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It's just not there.

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And so we believe the idea of whether it's rational or not, it doesn't need to be addressed if we stop at whether it's within the general rulemaking authority.

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Are there other presumptions that the secretary has created that in some sense exclude some veterans, like whether they served in Vietnam for a particular period, whether they had a certain length of time at Camp Lejeune or other examples?

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You know probably the full list, I don't.

[00:04:07] Speaker 05:
Yes, Your Honor.

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And why wouldn't that encounter the same problem that you're identifying about different classes of veterans?

[00:04:19] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, all of the other presumptions that are in place, except for one, the one related to mustard gas and lewisite, all have some sort of basis in the congressional statute.

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Here, there's no congressional statute to make this basis on.

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And so those wouldn't fall because there is the basis in the law to begin with.

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It's not the secretary relying solely on his general rulemaking authority.

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Here, that's what he's doing.

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He's relying on the idea that the secretary can put forth the nature and extent of proofs for and the evidence and trying to create what he's termed a predicate act, but what Congress turned back in 1933 as the condition precedent.

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Congress changed the law in 1957.

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The idea of being able to give that condition precedent saying the 90-day service or where they're located, that authority was no longer given to the executive branch.

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That authority was saved for Congress.

[00:05:21] Speaker 03:
Ms.

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Sajak, this is Judge Lind.

[00:05:25] Speaker 03:
Why isn't the secretary's discretion under Section 501 broad enough to encompass?

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what was done here with this regulation.

[00:05:36] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, while the Secretary's discretion in 501 is broad, it's not unfettered.

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And the idea of what he relied on, that he has the authority to create the presumption itself under the nature and extent of proof and evidence, doesn't give him the authority to create these different classes of veterans.

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That authority was specifically taken away from him

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in the Veterans Benefit Act of 1957 when the idea of giving the conditions precedent and the number of days for service that was talked about in the Economy Act of 1933, that authority was taken away in the Act of 1957, and that's the precursor for Section 501A here.

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So at the point in time that Congress took away, and they were very distinct in the Economy Act of 1933,

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when it gave the secretary the ability to create the presumptions, but he did not give the secretary the ability to create clauses.

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And so Mr. Snyder's argument is that once that authority was taken away from him, he can't kind of backdoor this new predicate fast idea into an authority that he no longer has.

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Are there any cases that you can cite that describe any restrictions on the power of the secretary to set limitations on a presumption?

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Any cases?

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Yes, Your Honor.

[00:07:01] Speaker 00:
There are multiple cases that have talked about the idea that it needs to be, it's not, the general rulemaking authority is not unfettered, that there needs to be a reasonable basis for it and that it is

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still kind of caught in this idea that it needs to be within the law itself.

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And they're with me for one second.

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I'll get the casings themselves.

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So FTC, this is RCA Communications, which was a Supreme Court case.

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wide regulatory powers, but that it does not do so with unbounded discretion.

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That was not exactly the language that 501A has, but the idea is being that while it is broad authority, it is not something that the Secretary can just run with.

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But that case, I don't think that case stands for the proposition that the authority must be set forth in another statute.

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Am I wrong?

[00:08:16] Speaker 00:
No, Your Honor, it doesn't.

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You're not incorrect.

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I think the authority needs to be set out in another statute from the idea that how the secretary is coming up with what the classes are.

[00:08:37] Speaker 00:
If the secretary doesn't have the authority to create the classes to begin with, to say that you have to have exposure by service in Vietnam, or to say that you needed the 30 days to be in Camp Lejeune, or here that you just needed to be a veteran, the idea that you're coming up with these classes that the only way that the ability to create the classes is coming from the Economy Act of 1933.

[00:09:05] Speaker 00:
I know it's a really old statute, but that's where the idea of creating these different subclasses that you have active service and wartime service or peatland service and how those can get further divided and where we can put veterans and create the presumptions within those classes.

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All of that goes back to the Economy Act of 1933 and the powers that were given at that time to the executive branch.

[00:09:28] Speaker 00:
But then we fast forward.

[00:09:30] Speaker 04:
Hi there.

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This is Judge Chen.

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I just want to ask another question.

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I think it's somewhat connected to Judge Toronto's first question, but I just want to make sure I understand your conception of how this 1933 act operates.

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If, hypothetically, there was a scientific study that proved that there's a very, very strong correlation between those veterans who had served in the Persian Gulf War

[00:10:00] Speaker 04:
and then, and with ALS.

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And there is no, and then as for any other veteran who did not serve in the Persian Gulf War, there is no increased possibility of ALS than the rest of the country.

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And the VA decides that there's enough science here to back up the idea of wanting to give this presumption

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to all Persian Gulf War veterans.

[00:10:36] Speaker 04:
You're saying the only way the VA could write a regulation to give that class of veterans, that group of veterans this presumption is if it gives everybody, every veteran that presumption.

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Even though the science shows that there's no increased risk at all for non-Persian Gulf War veterans.

[00:10:59] Speaker 00:
It sounded like I was out of time.

[00:11:01] Speaker 00:
May I have permission to answer the question?

[00:11:02] Speaker 05:
Yes, please do.

[00:11:05] Speaker 00:
Mr. Snyder's argument is that Congress would need to make that distinction, that the secretary's authority does not go that broad to make the presumption and to make the different classes of veterans, that that only falls within Congress.

[00:11:19] Speaker 00:
And so even if the science, it was there to say that it's only go for veterans or that it's something that needs to have served for 91 days.

[00:11:28] Speaker 00:
If the science was there, but the Congress hasn't drafted and passed a statute that gives the different distinctions of classes for where that is and the secretary's authority for even though it's broad rulemaking authority, he's overstepping

[00:11:47] Speaker 00:
by putting in the different classes, however you want to create those different classes.

[00:11:55] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:11:57] Speaker 05:
It is, okay, you will have your rebuttal time left and we will hear from Mr. Bechrich.

[00:12:11] Speaker 02:
Good afternoon, Your Honors, and may it please the Court

[00:12:15] Speaker 02:
The court should affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims because the regulation setting forth the presumption of service connection for ALS is valid and because Mr. Snyder failed to establish the predicate facts necessary to invoke that presumption.

[00:12:31] Speaker 02:
There are two reasons that the court should affirm the validity of Section 3.318.

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The first is that that regulation was promulgated in accordance with the governing statutory authority

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and which is found at Section 501A.

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And the second is that that regulation is not arbitrary and capricious because the Secretary based the regulation on the underlying science and analogous statutes and regulations.

[00:13:00] Speaker 05:
I'll address that first.

[00:13:03] Speaker 05:
Can I just ask, rather a lot here, maybe even almost everything comes down to this Weisskopf study, and I just want to be sure I understand it.

[00:13:13] Speaker 05:
The key pages are 203, 204 of the appendix.

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Am I understanding things correctly?

[00:13:22] Speaker 05:
And again, Table 3 has been the center of most of the discussion in the briefs.

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This is at Appendix 204.

[00:13:35] Speaker 05:
408,000 or so of the, that were in the study, 281,000 were veterans and then the quintiles would be, each one of those would have one fifth of that 281,000 or about 56,000 and then the,

[00:14:03] Speaker 05:
chart and they're organized in length of time of service and

[00:14:13] Speaker 05:
The secretary's reading of that, if I understand it right, is that the length of time of service was measured only in units of years, not in finer units like days or weeks or months, and hence the median figures are these nice round numbers.

[00:14:36] Speaker 05:
with 21 of the 56,000 in the first quintile having died and 65 in the next, etc.

[00:14:47] Speaker 05:
Having died or at least having ALS, I guess.

[00:14:50] Speaker 05:
I'm not quite sure which that is.

[00:14:53] Speaker 05:
Am I understanding what I'm reading here correctly?

[00:15:01] Speaker 02:
Yeah, I think you've got it exactly right.

[00:15:03] Speaker 02:
The study divided the different studies participants into these quintiles, which included two, three, four, five, and nine years.

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And based on those quintiles, the study concluded that there really wasn't a difference in the likelihood of developing ALS

[00:15:22] Speaker 02:
between a veteran in quintile one versus a veteran in quintile five.

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But what the study didn't look at was whether there was a minimum time necessary to be in service to see an increased likelihood of developing ALS.

[00:15:39] Speaker 05:
And the secretary did not make anything of the difference, which is between quintile one and quintile two, which is a, you know, like a three to one

[00:15:51] Speaker 05:
Is that right?

[00:15:54] Speaker 02:
That's right, Your Honor, and I think part of that is related to the difference between, for example, quintile two and the later quintiles, because I think actually the number of cases went down for those later quintiles as compared to quintile two.

[00:16:14] Speaker 05:
Right, but in any case, the Secretary did not make anything of the quintile one versus two difference, right?

[00:16:22] Speaker 05:
For chennery reasons, we couldn't either.

[00:16:26] Speaker 02:
I think that's right, Your Honor.

[00:16:30] Speaker 02:
I think that what the Secretary looked at was just the fact that the study considered years of service, and that was the two years was the minimum time looked at by the

[00:16:44] Speaker 02:
by the study, and I think that's relevant, particularly relevant here when considering 90 days, because 90 days,

[00:16:53] Speaker 05:
Just to be clear, at least in one sense, it's not quite right to say two years was the minimum time.

[00:17:01] Speaker 05:
The first 56,000, the lowest years of service group of 56,000 had a median in years of service of two.

[00:17:14] Speaker 05:
So that would include everybody down to zero.

[00:17:19] Speaker 02:
I think that's correct.

[00:17:22] Speaker 05:
But we have no idea how many there are down to zero or therefore if you if you refined it more finely and looked at ALS case rates for people who served at 90 days or six months or even one year what the answer would be Weisskopf just doesn't tell us that.

[00:17:43] Speaker 02:
That's exactly right.

[00:17:44] Speaker 02:
So all we had, let me clarify, all we have to go off of is that two years.

[00:17:48] Speaker 02:
You're right that not everybody in that first quintile necessarily served for two years.

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That was only the median time.

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But then, but then going, setting the time period at 90 days, the secretary chose a period of time that's actually much more generous to the veterans.

[00:18:06] Speaker 02:
And I think it's particularly relevant here that after the secretary said that time,

[00:18:12] Speaker 02:
the ALS Association commented on the interim rule and said that it was appropriate, that the 90 days was an appropriate amount of time for, to see a likelihood of, or an increased likelihood of developing ALS.

[00:18:28] Speaker 02:
And I also think that 90 days is appropriate in light of the analogous statutes and regulations.

[00:18:35] Speaker 02:
Commerce has endorsed the use of, or excuse me, Congress has endorsed the use of 90 days

[00:18:42] Speaker 02:
in 38 USC 1112.

[00:18:45] Speaker 04:
This is Judge Chen.

[00:18:47] Speaker 04:
Do we have any information as to why Congress picked 90 days in that other statute and also why the VA picked 90 days as the minimum period of time for that one-sided regulation?

[00:19:06] Speaker 02:
So the regulation was sort of the Secretary's

[00:19:12] Speaker 02:
promulgation of a regulation based on the statute.

[00:19:14] Speaker 02:
I think the regulation was based on Congress's statute.

[00:19:18] Speaker 02:
I'm not sure where the 90 days came from on the statute, but I do think it's particularly relevant that we look at what that statute and the corresponding regulation apply to.

[00:19:30] Speaker 02:
And that's chronic diseases, and those chronic diseases are laid out in section 3.309 that says

[00:19:39] Speaker 02:
I believe it's 38 CFR 3.309.

[00:19:43] Speaker 02:
The chronic diseases actually includes ALS.

[00:19:47] Speaker 02:
So the Secretary, through Commerce's endorsement of 90 days, has already determined that 90 days is an appropriate amount of time to warrant service connection for ALS.

[00:20:00] Speaker 02:
Now that regulation was dealing with a period of war.

[00:20:04] Speaker 02:
The 90 days had to be

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during a period of war and that the onset of the disability had to take place within one year of separation from service.

[00:20:14] Speaker 02:
But I think it's particularly, I think that actually furthers the reasonableness of the Secretary's action here because the 90 days does not have to take place during a war period and the ALS can be developed at any time after a veteran service.

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It doesn't have to be within one year of service.

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And for these reasons, we think that in light of the underlying evidence and in light of the analogous statute to regulations, it was reasonable.

[00:20:45] Speaker 02:
The Secretary's actions were reasonable and the regulations not arbitrary or capricious.

[00:20:54] Speaker 05:
And just to be clear, the chronic disease, I see that's defined in 3.309, the 90-day rule appears in 3.307, is that right?

[00:21:08] Speaker 02:
Yes, Your Honor, that's exactly right.

[00:21:09] Speaker 05:
Okay.

[00:21:10] Speaker 05:
Even though all of this would be quite, as a scientific matter, would be quite problem-specific, let's call it.

[00:21:22] Speaker 05:
disease-specific, condition-specific?

[00:21:29] Speaker 02:
Right, Your Honor.

[00:21:29] Speaker 02:
I think just the fact that ALS has been, there has been a presumption of service connection for ALS previously in 90 days with you and sort of

[00:21:41] Speaker 02:
and with more demanding credit case, namely the period of war and the onset within one year of service.

[00:21:50] Speaker 02:
I think that speaks to the reasonableness of the Secretary's action here.

[00:21:56] Speaker 02:
Turning to the statutory authority for the promulgation of the regulations.

[00:22:02] Speaker 05:
Before you do that, can I just ask?

[00:22:06] Speaker 05:
Is it necessary to give Bowers any role in this analysis?

[00:22:10] Speaker 05:
It's a case that seemed at least one significant step removed from what we specifically have in front of us, isn't it?

[00:22:21] Speaker 02:
So I don't think it's necessary to give Bowers.

[00:22:25] Speaker 02:
I think the court can certainly affirm independent of Bowers.

[00:22:29] Speaker 02:
I think the similarity with Bowers is that, like Mr. Snyder,

[00:22:34] Speaker 02:
The appellant in Bowers argued that any military service should be sufficient to obtain entitlement to the presumption of service connection for ALS.

[00:22:44] Speaker 02:
And what the Veterans Court said was that we have to apply a valid regulation as it is written.

[00:22:51] Speaker 02:
We can't rewrite that regulation.

[00:22:55] Speaker 02:
So I think Bowers would support that.

[00:22:57] Speaker 02:
If the court found that the regulation is valid here, I think Bowers would support the determination that

[00:23:04] Speaker 02:
The court can't simply rewrite the regulation if it was otherwise valid.

[00:23:11] Speaker 02:
Go on.

[00:23:12] Speaker 05:
You were going to go back to the statutory authority question.

[00:23:18] Speaker 02:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:23:19] Speaker 02:
And that statutory authority comes from 30A USP section 501A, specifically subsection one

[00:23:27] Speaker 02:
Congress stepped forth that the Secretary has authority to prescribe regulations with respect to the nature and extent of proof and evidence in order to establish the right to benefits.

[00:23:39] Speaker 02:
Here, the right to benefits is service connection for ALS.

[00:23:43] Speaker 02:
And without the regulation, a veteran would have to prove that not only that he or she developed ALS, but that there was an in-service occurrence of a disease or injury.

[00:23:56] Speaker 02:
and that there was a causal relationship between that in service and current and the development of ALS.

[00:24:03] Speaker 02:
But the secretary changed that.

[00:24:04] Speaker 02:
What the secretary said is that all the veteran need proof is that he or she developed ALS and that the veteran had 90 days of active and continuous service.

[00:24:13] Speaker 02:
In other words, the secretary changed the nature and extent of proof necessary to establish a claim.

[00:24:20] Speaker 02:
This is exactly what Section 501A1 envisions.

[00:24:25] Speaker 02:
And that's what this court has held that a presumption does.

[00:24:31] Speaker 02:
The court has explained that a presumption allows a claimant, such as Mr. Snyder, to establish a predicate fact which then fills an evidentiary gap.

[00:24:41] Speaker 02:
In other words, a presumption changes the evidence needed to establish a claim.

[00:24:46] Speaker 02:
And so this regulation was promulgated in accordance with the governing statutory authority.

[00:24:52] Speaker 02:
And any argument to the contrary ignores the plain language of 501A.

[00:25:00] Speaker 02:
If the court has no further questions, we just ask that the decision of the Veterans Court be affirmed.

[00:25:08] Speaker 05:
Okay.

[00:25:08] Speaker 05:
Thank you, Mr. Bekrich.

[00:25:10] Speaker 05:
Ms.

[00:25:11] Speaker 05:
Zajac, you have, I think, five minutes.

[00:25:15] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:25:17] Speaker 00:
I'd like to address first the idea that in Bowers, the argument was that somebody with any military service should be good enough and that that were basically making the same argument here.

[00:25:27] Speaker 00:
Mr. Snyder wholeheartedly disagrees with that.

[00:25:31] Speaker 00:
We're not arguing that anybody with some sort of military service should be good enough.

[00:25:35] Speaker 00:
We're arguing that a veteran should receive this.

[00:25:38] Speaker 00:
And the difference between that and Mr. Bowers is that Mr. Bowers wasn't a veteran.

[00:25:43] Speaker 00:
He had

[00:25:44] Speaker 00:
National Guard service and was not injured while on active duty for training.

[00:25:48] Speaker 00:
Therefore, he never reached the veteran status and that is why the presumption cannot apply to him.

[00:25:53] Speaker 00:
Here, Mr. Snyder is a veteran.

[00:25:56] Speaker 00:
He was injured on day 47 of his service and he was honorably discharged.

[00:26:02] Speaker 00:
He meets all of the requirements to be a veteran and therefore should be meeting the requirements for this presumption because the secretary can't add an additional step on top of that

[00:26:12] Speaker 00:
that he doesn't have the authority to do.

[00:26:16] Speaker 00:
Number two, for the court's own information, I believe one of the judges was asking about how many veterans would seem to kind of fall into this first quintile.

[00:26:27] Speaker 00:
And PVA represents about 75% of the veterans that have applied for ALS, for service connection.

[00:26:36] Speaker 00:
And based on the information from our service officers, we can say that there's only a couple hundred of veterans that if we took away the 90-day service requirement, that this would then be assisting.

[00:26:47] Speaker 00:
And that doesn't seem like a large number to the secretary, but for each and every one of those veterans, and again, we're talking about veterans, we're talking about people that have met the statutory requirements to be considered a veteran, it would be the world to them.

[00:27:04] Speaker 00:
It also seems to me that the secretary is trying to kind of back end his way into a reasonableness argument by relying on the fact that the statute 1112 had put in the 90 days and ALS is one of the diseases that then can receive the chronic presumptive service.

[00:27:29] Speaker 00:
But the problem here is that there is no statute.

[00:27:32] Speaker 00:
and that we can't piggyback on what Congress found in 1112 because that's not what the Secretary relied on in creating this factor.

[00:27:42] Speaker 00:
He did try to do so by analogy, which shows to me that he knows that he can't rely on it specifically because it's not what is coming forth here.

[00:27:52] Speaker 00:
The sole way of doing this is through the

[00:27:57] Speaker 00:
General rulemaking authority, which is not broad enough, well, it's broad.

[00:28:01] Speaker 00:
It's not broad enough to include creating these two different types of classes.

[00:28:05] Speaker 00:
If Congress would like to do so and then the secretary would be able to put in, then that would be a different situation.

[00:28:13] Speaker 00:
But that's not what we have here.

[00:28:15] Speaker 00:
We have a veteran who is insurgent.

[00:28:18] Speaker 03:
Say, Jack, excuse me.

[00:28:19] Speaker 03:
This is Judge Wynn.

[00:28:20] Speaker 03:
Yeah.

[00:28:23] Speaker 03:
Would the secretary have authority

[00:28:26] Speaker 03:
to promulgate a presumption of ALS regardless of the extent of service, independent of the number of days of service?

[00:28:39] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor, because that falls within the nature and extent of proofs and evidence.

[00:28:43] Speaker 00:
He has the authority to create a presumption.

[00:28:45] Speaker 00:
That is within the general rulemaking authority.

[00:28:48] Speaker 00:
There's no question of that.

[00:28:49] Speaker 00:
It's whether the addition of the 90 days into as

[00:28:53] Speaker 00:
opposing counsel say that this idea of a predicate fact, that's what the authority is not included.

[00:29:02] Speaker 00:
But the idea of the presumption itself, we absolutely believe that the Secretary has the authority and has used that authority in multiple cases.

[00:29:11] Speaker 03:
But couldn't it be argued that that is arbitrary?

[00:29:15] Speaker 03:
If the only basis is the same Weisskopf study, for example,

[00:29:22] Speaker 00:
Could it be arbitrary to say that any veteran would receive it?

[00:29:26] Speaker 00:
Is that what you're asking, Your Honor?

[00:29:29] Speaker 00:
Correct.

[00:29:29] Speaker 00:
I don't think so.

[00:29:31] Speaker 00:
I think the conclusion by the Wysoff study and the conclusion by the National Academy said it was that it didn't matter what the length of service was.

[00:29:38] Speaker 00:
And if you're looking at the quintiles, I think Your Honor's pointed out that the two years for the first quintile, that was a median.

[00:29:46] Speaker 00:
That inherently means that some of these veterans had less service.

[00:29:51] Speaker 00:
And the Secretary, while he's saying the 90 days is generous, it also goes to the arbitrariness of what he's done here.

[00:29:57] Speaker 00:
Because if you're solely looking at the years of service, and that's the Secretary's argument, then where is he coming up with the 90 days?

[00:30:07] Speaker 00:
This idea that there is no idea what causes the cities.

[00:30:16] Speaker 03:
Is there any number of days that would

[00:30:19] Speaker 03:
would pass muster?

[00:30:21] Speaker 03:
In other words, could the secretary have said, well, 10 days?

[00:30:29] Speaker 00:
I see that my time is up.

[00:30:30] Speaker 00:
May I answer the question, Your Honor?

[00:30:32] Speaker 05:
Yes, please do.

[00:30:34] Speaker 00:
I think the key here isn't the number of days that does, but somebody has veteran status.

[00:30:38] Speaker 00:
And so at this point, the study is talking about having some sort of military service.

[00:30:44] Speaker 00:
Um, so to directly answer your question, your honor, no, I don't think any number of days would have fit within this because they don't know what causes it and putting some sort of numerical, uh, distinction assumes that there needs to be, um, to me, a compounding effect or something, some sort of exposure.

[00:31:05] Speaker 00:
And that's not what the study said.

[00:31:07] Speaker 00:
The study says that it's just military service.

[00:31:10] Speaker 00:
They don't know specifically what it was.

[00:31:11] Speaker 00:
And so at this point in time,

[00:31:13] Speaker 00:
based on the information that's in the rulemaking, there is no reason for there to be a 90-day service requirement, nor would there be any reason to put any number on it because all that should be required is veteran status.

[00:31:28] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:31:28] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:31:30] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:31:31] Speaker 00:
We ask that the court... Thank you.

[00:31:33] Speaker 05:
Thank you.

[00:31:34] Speaker 05:
Okay.

[00:31:35] Speaker 05:
Thanks to both counsel.

[00:31:37] Speaker 05:
The case is submitted.

[00:31:45] Speaker 01:
The honorable court is adjourned until tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.