[00:00:03] Speaker 01:
Our next case is Ruth Etzel versus the EPA and the MSPB, 2022, 2050, and 2051.

[00:01:09] Speaker 01:
We're ready when you are, Council.

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Is it dinnesteen?

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So good morning, your honors.

[00:01:22] Speaker 00:
My name is Paula Dinnerstein.

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I'm with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER for short.

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And we represented the petitioner in this case, Dr. Ruth Etzel.

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At council table with me is my co-counselor, Peter Jenkins.

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And Dr. Etzel herself is here in the courtroom.

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We're here today because the MSPB judge found that there were no protected disclosures in this case

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that were a contributing factor to any adverse action against Dr. Edsel.

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And as a result, the EPA was not required to meet its burden of proof of clear and convincing evidence that it did not take the actions that it did against Dr. Edsel because of her protective disclosures.

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Dr. Edsel is a pediatrician

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and epidemiologist, environmental epidemiologist with a distinguished 30-year career in the United States Public Health Service, in the United Nations World Health Organization.

[00:02:27] Speaker 01:
Yes, but well, we know her biography.

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The question is, were her disclosures evidence of gross mismanagement or a danger to public health, or just reflective of a difference of opinion on policy and the speed

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of taking action against lead pollution.

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Yes, that's correct.

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First point on that is that, yes, we claim that her disclosures were clearly under this court's precedence of a substantial and specific danger to public health on the television stations she appeared on in 2018.

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And whether or not it was a policy disagreement doesn't stop it from being a protected disclosure.

[00:03:14] Speaker 02:
What's the specific disclosure that she made in the CNN or CBS appearances?

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Because unfortunately we don't have the transcript of what she said.

[00:03:25] Speaker 00:
Yes, we do have in the appendix there is an exhibit which is basically a transcript of what she said on her CBS appearance.

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which she also testified at the hearing that that was what she said.

[00:03:42] Speaker 02:
What she said... Okay, but let me ask my question.

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My question is, as I see the description of what she said, it sounds very general.

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It's not a specific thing.

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You're not taking this particular action to prevent lead exposure to children.

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It's a general complaint.

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And if I understand the case as a general complaint isn't sufficient, so why is this sufficiently specific in your view?

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In the two years leading up to this disclosure, Dr. Edsel had worked on a federal-led strategy that was going to take very specific actions to reduce... Sure, but the question is not what she worked on.

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The question is what she said.

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And what she said

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on the television program is that that strategy that she had been working on had been abandoned by EPA, that she did not believe that EPA was going to take any action to actually reduce... Where is the statement that the specific strategy had been abandoned and that one was injury to children?

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It's in the appendix, if you would look, I believe it's on page 1607 and 1608.

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1607.

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1607 and 1608 in the appendix.

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And the quote here is that she told the interviewer that the national strategy to remove lead from children's environment was, quote,

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with one official brought in by the new administration telling her that anything involving new regulation wouldn't fly.

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And then there's a quote from her saying, my sense is that the government has absolutely no intention of taking any action towards seriously changing lead in children's environments.

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OK, but that's not a reference to a specific strategy.

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There's no description of a specific strategy there.

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referred to the strategy that she had been working on.

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It's not necessary for a specific and substantial threat to public health and safety for her to lay out all the details of the disclosure.

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That's obviously correct.

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She doesn't have to lay out all of the details, but she has to be sufficiently specific so you know exactly what it is that she's saying.

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is not happening and the children are being injured as a result of it.

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Right.

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What she was saying is that the strategy that she had been working on, which was intended to reduce lead from all sources in children's environment, had been stalled and she believed was likely to be abandoned or so watered down that it would be ineffective.

[00:06:32] Speaker 02:
Okay, but she doesn't say what the strategy is.

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Well, the strategy is to reduce lead in children's environments.

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I mean, what she says is that my sense is that the government has no intention of taking any action towards seriously reducing lead in children's environments.

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That was what the strategy was supposed to do.

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So if you compare this, for instance, to the disclosure that was made by the chief of police chambers in this court's decision, which is the leading decision on what is a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety,

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in Chambers versus Department of Interior, what she disclosed was very simple disclosure.

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She said, traffic accidents on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway have increased because of the reduced police presence there.

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She didn't say how much they had increased.

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She didn't say why she believed that the reduced police presence was the cause.

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She did.

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She said it went from four officers to two officers.

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And we can already see an increase in accidents.

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It may be simple, but that sounds specific in a way that the things you've pointed us to do not seem specific.

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So she said there was a reduction in the number of officers, correct, and that it led to an increase in accidents.

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She didn't say how many more accidents there were, why she thought it was an increase.

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But this court said that any increase

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in traffic accidents was a serious and substantial danger to public safety.

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complained about the reduction by fifty percent of the number of officers that were on the parkway.

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Where's anything like that kind of specificity in what your client said here?

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All you've pointed us to is she's generally complaining about the timing with which this report or new policy is going to be issued.

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So one of the errors that the administrative judge made in his decision was that he minimized the substantiality of her disclosure by saying it was only about the timing.

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It was only about his delay.

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That wasn't her disclosure.

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Her disclosure was that there wasn't going to be- Probably she doesn't tell us what the national strategy is so that one could see whether the federal to implement it would be a harm to children.

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She just says a national strategy.

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stalled.

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She doesn't say what the strategy is or how it would prevent the harm that she's talking about.

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In looking at the disclosure itself, you have to look at who made it, just as this court looked at that in the Chambers case, that she was an expert in public safety.

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She knew the areas under her jurisdiction.

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And therefore, she could say that this increase in traffic accidents was caused by the reducing police presence because of her expertise.

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Dr. Edsel went on television as a 30-year

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renowned expert in the world on children's health and told the parents of the United States that EPA had dropped the ball, that it had a strategy in the works that was intended to reduce children's lead exposure and now it wasn't going to do it.

[00:10:02] Speaker 00:
So looking at who she was and who she was speaking to and what she knew, which goes to the reasonableness of her belief, what she knew because of her expertise,

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It was a protected disclosure.

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It may not have been exactly the same as chief chambers with a four to two.

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But nevertheless, it is well known that lead exposure is a serious threat to children's health all over this country.

[00:10:28] Speaker 02:
Does the record show about what the national strategy would have done?

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That was not something that she specifically addressed.

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in her television appearances.

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It was certainly something she knew.

[00:10:42] Speaker 02:
But what does the record show about what it was?

[00:10:45] Speaker 00:
Oh, what it was?

[00:10:46] Speaker 02:
Yeah, I'm not asking now about what she said in the television appearance.

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I'm just asking what the national strategy was.

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How did it work?

[00:10:57] Speaker 00:
So what the national led strategy was before it was watered down after they put Dr. Edsel on administrative leave,

[00:11:06] Speaker 00:
was it was taking the first, it had several goals, and the first goal was to reduce children's light exposure.

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The others had to do with communication and helping children in communities that were especially affected by lead and so on.

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But as far as reducing children's light exposure, we'd look at the exposure from different sources, whether it was in the air from aviation fuel,

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whether it was from food, from water, such as this.

[00:11:36] Speaker 02:
What did it do to remedy lead exposure?

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So what it did is it looked at all the existing government programs that were addressing these things and the regulations that for instance might limit lead in water or limit the use of lead paint, that was one that had already occurred, or

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limit other ways that children get exposed to lead and it had specific programs

[00:12:05] Speaker 00:
that were going to go forward in order to reduce exposure from all these different sources of lead, both programs, grants, new regulations, everything sort of in the government's playbook.

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That's why it took so long to work up this strategy.

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They had been working on it for two years by the time she went on television with 17 different federal agencies and offices.

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to have a very comprehensive approach to all the ways that children are being exposed to lead and to address them.

[00:12:40] Speaker 00:
What Dr. Edsel was told in early 2018 by an official in the new Trump administration, EPA Administrator's Office, was that the administration had no intention of having any enforceable measures in the

[00:12:58] Speaker 00:
strategy and instead they just wanted to repackage things that were already being done.

[00:13:02] Speaker 03:
I think you're asking us to decide de novo whether her statements were substantial and specific enough.

[00:13:10] Speaker 03:
Have we ever said, the Federal Circuit, have we ever said that that's a de novo review matter?

[00:13:19] Speaker 00:
Well, I think it's probably a mixed question of fact and law as to whether her disclosures were substantial and specific under this court's precedent.

[00:13:31] Speaker 00:
We think they are.

[00:13:33] Speaker 03:
Do you point to any factual errors in what the board said about how substantial or specific they were?

[00:13:39] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:13:41] Speaker 00:
So there's a couple things.

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One, the factual error that we've pretty much already discussed, which is that the court said that the disclosure was just about a delay.

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It was just about a matter of timing.

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It wasn't.

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It was about there not being a lead strategy at all or it being so ordered down that it would be ineffective.

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So that's a factual error.

[00:14:02] Speaker 00:
There are also legal errors.

[00:14:04] Speaker 00:
One of the legal errors was that the judge said that the danger should be quantifiable.

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That's clearly not the case law in this circuit.

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In the Chambers case, as we've discussed already, she did not quantify how many more accidents there were or would be.

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Another error that the judge made

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was that he didn't recognize her expertise, as we've already discussed to some extent, that in the Chamber's case, the reasonableness of her belief was based on her expertise that this court accepted as somebody who would know why traffic accidents increased.

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And likewise, Dr. Edsel has extreme expertise in children's health.

[00:14:55] Speaker 01:
Counsel, you're a battle of time.

[00:14:56] Speaker 01:
I assume you want to save it.

[00:14:58] Speaker 00:
Yes, I appreciate you telling me that.

[00:15:00] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:15:17] Speaker 04:
Good morning, Your Honor, and may it please the Court

[00:15:20] Speaker 04:
This morning, focusing on the one reported disclosure that Appellants' Council focused on only, there are other issues in the case of Web Arloom, my argument only to the one we discussed with Positioners' Council.

[00:15:33] Speaker 04:
The primary focus here in the thin record that we have of the disclosure at issue, as reported by the board at Appendix 18, focuses on a policy disagreement, that being

[00:15:49] Speaker 02:
based on substantial evidence, the finding of the administrative judge, that the petitioner... There's something more that a policy... If she described the national strategy in specific terms and said it would reduce lead exposure by doing X, Y, and Z, and they're not issuing it, would that have been a sufficient disclosure?

[00:16:14] Speaker 04:
Your honor, that may have been a closer case.

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However, as I believe Judge Dyke, you referenced in the opening argument, in this case, there is no evidence in the disclosure itself or otherwise in the record as to specific actions that this petitioner, this employee had proposed and had been rejected by the agency and the consequences specifically then flowing from the failure of the agency.

[00:16:42] Speaker 04:
allegedly or purportedly to put those regulations or specific parameters in the lead strategy.

[00:16:48] Speaker 04:
As Your Honor notes, the disclosures in themselves in October 2018 have no detail as to what the lead strategy was in and of itself to start with, let alone any purported lapses in the substance of that strategy.

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There is a general theme in this case, continued throughout argument today by Petitioner's

[00:17:11] Speaker 04:
that overstates what was actually in the disclosures themselves.

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The disclosures, as I believe the court is aware, are the record of them, again, being thin and related, Appendix 18, primarily by the board, and undisputed by the petitioner in the case as to the accuracy of that statement of the disclosures.

[00:17:33] Speaker 04:
And that really goes to the standard of review that we have here.

[00:17:38] Speaker 02:
What you said on 16-0-H, that national strategy

[00:17:41] Speaker 02:
move lead from children's environments stalled.

[00:17:48] Speaker 02:
New regulations wouldn't fly.

[00:17:51] Speaker 02:
I guess it's a close question as to whether that's specific enough.

[00:17:54] Speaker 02:
She's making clear it's lead in the environment which could harm children.

[00:18:01] Speaker 02:
She just doesn't say what the strategy is.

[00:18:04] Speaker 02:
And is the failure to be more specific sufficient to make it not a protected disclosure?

[00:18:12] Speaker 02:
I don't know.

[00:18:13] Speaker 02:
It seems to me difficult, a close question.

[00:18:17] Speaker 04:
Your Honor, respectfully, I disagree with it being a close question in this case.

[00:18:21] Speaker 04:
There are marked distinctions between the specificity this Court has found to be sufficient in cases such as Chambers 3, which I believe Judge Dyke was the author of,

[00:18:33] Speaker 04:
Um, and, and, and what we have in this case and the administrative judge, I believe on appendix 27 actually does a, uh, kind of side by side comparison of what was at issue in chambers three and versus what we have here.

[00:18:48] Speaker 04:
And as the court teased out with petitioners council, the reduction in officers on the specific Baltimore Washington Parkway from four officers to two officers, a measured

[00:19:01] Speaker 04:
measurable quantifiable increase in traffic accidents occurring on that particular Parkway.

[00:19:07] Speaker 04:
Those particulars have to be quantifiable doesn't your honor doesn't have to be called quantifiable necessarily, but it being quantifiable goes to this court's ability to assess the likelihood or the magnitude of the harm

[00:19:21] Speaker 04:
which in chambers is one of the factors that this court considers as to whether a disclosing employee or applicant has a reasonable belief that what they have disclosed evidences a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.

[00:19:39] Speaker 03:
So what if Dr. Edsela just added a sentence identifying one specific

[00:19:45] Speaker 03:
elementary school here in the district and said, you know, children there are going to suffer because of the delay, something, something like that.

[00:19:53] Speaker 03:
Would that been enough to push this over the edge?

[00:19:56] Speaker 04:
Your Honor, again, that may have been a closer case.

[00:19:59] Speaker 04:
However, we don't have that level of specificity in the record.

[00:20:04] Speaker 03:
I think what makes this challenging, at least for me, is there's, there's no dispute, I guess, at this point.

[00:20:13] Speaker 03:
that lead poisoning is a problem and we know what harm sadly it leads to.

[00:20:20] Speaker 03:
So doesn't that arguably at least reduce the requirement of specificity when there's an unchallenged sort of background scientific fact?

[00:20:32] Speaker 03:
And wouldn't she reasonably think that her listeners would know

[00:20:39] Speaker 03:
Uh, that she's talking about all the terrible things that follow from lead poisoning.

[00:20:45] Speaker 03:
If we don't, you know, take care of it.

[00:20:47] Speaker 04:
Your honor, I believe you're discussing what goes to substantiality of the harm, which the government, like the administrative judge doesn't question the perils of lead exposure to children.

[00:21:00] Speaker 04:
And this is on appendix 29.

[00:21:02] Speaker 04:
But however, the lack of specificity in the case.

[00:21:06] Speaker 04:
specificity regarding what the EPA had failed to do and that was insinuated to be exacerbating lead poisoning in children is lacking.

[00:21:19] Speaker 04:
And this is explained at Appendix 30 of the board's opinion where the administrative judge says that Dr. Edsel, consistent with the substantial evidence in the record, which is the standard here,

[00:21:31] Speaker 04:
Made no specific allegations on October 15 and 16, 2018 about EPA's policies or actions.

[00:21:39] Speaker 04:
There being no clear nexus to what the government had done or had failed to do or not timely done, and an alleged increase in or continuing of poisoning of children by lead exposure.

[00:21:51] Speaker 04:
Nor did her disclosures reveal, the administrative judge says, a specific impending harm resulting because of any delay in EPA issuing the federal lead strategy.

[00:22:01] Speaker 04:
To the extent that Petitioner's Council today talks about the disclosure being more focused on the content of the strategy, the teeth of the strategy versus the timeliness of the strategy, the record simply doesn't bear out that the focus here was on the teeth of the strategy or the rigor of the strategy, but rather it is focused on the timing and an apparent belief, unreasonable as it was,

[00:22:28] Speaker 04:
that the petitioner thought the strategy should have been released before it was.

[00:22:34] Speaker 04:
And this really is borne out in the board's opinion at appendix 28 and 29, where as it relates to this disclosure, the focus is on the fact that there had been a long time running getting the policy into shape to be able to promulgate.

[00:22:51] Speaker 04:
There were 17 member agencies and offices involved in coming together and coordinating this effort.

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to issue a broad strategy on reducing or abating lead exposure in children's environments.

[00:23:04] Speaker 04:
This was, as Dr. Etzel understood, a protracted process with many stakeholders involved.

[00:23:12] Speaker 04:
So that belief in and of itself certainly lacks any reasonable basis that for some reason the EPA had failed to timely issue the policy.

[00:23:21] Speaker 04:
Again, given the

[00:23:25] Speaker 04:
Lack of specificity in agency action or policy, we are left with an unprotected policy disagreement.

[00:23:35] Speaker 04:
The statute makes clear at 2302A2D that these types of policy disagreements are not protected disclosures that can lead to whistleblower

[00:23:45] Speaker 04:
reprisal recovery and there were several times that our standard review on the specificity is for i think you said substantial evidence where have we set that that that is our standard review your honor i'm not aware of a particular instance for the court has said that the review of that is for substantial evidence however uh... in the chamber's decision for example the review of whether

[00:24:13] Speaker 04:
police chief chambers had made a sufficiently substantial and specific disclosure of public health or danger, public health or safety went to the factual basis and the factual underpinnings of what the police chief had disclosed to the Washington Post reporter in that case.

[00:24:33] Speaker 04:
Here, there really is no dispute as to the legal principles that the administrative judge was applying.

[00:24:42] Speaker 04:
the dispute on the petitioner's side as to how the administrative judge applied them to the facts that we have in the case.

[00:24:49] Speaker 03:
But you would say on the standard review, it's at least implicit in our chambers decision?

[00:24:54] Speaker 04:
Correct.

[00:24:56] Speaker 04:
And the substantial evidence for the administrative judges... Where in chambers did we say that?

[00:25:02] Speaker 04:
I'm sorry, Your Honor?

[00:25:02] Speaker 02:
Where in chambers did we say that?

[00:25:05] Speaker 04:
When the court in chambers goes through the

[00:25:12] Speaker 04:
First of all, the court in chambers, as your honor is aware, at 1376 goes to the legal standard itself and then applies that standard to the facts of the disclosure made by the police chief in the case.

[00:25:30] Speaker 04:
And this is at 1377 and 1378.

[00:25:37] Speaker 02:
So I guess my question is, where do we say what the standard or review is?

[00:25:43] Speaker 04:
In speaking with Judge Stark, Your Honor, I think I had agreed that it's implicit in the decision, not necessarily explicit in the decision.

[00:25:54] Speaker 04:
And again, in this case, there is no legal error contended, at least not meaningfully.

[00:26:04] Speaker 04:
that the issue comes down to how the administrative judge actually applied to the facts of this case the standards that have been articulated in cases such as Chambers.

[00:26:14] Speaker 02:
We should look at it the other way.

[00:26:15] Speaker 02:
The question of whether a particular disclosure is sufficiently specific is a legal issue.

[00:26:20] Speaker 02:
It could be one or the other.

[00:26:22] Speaker 02:
It's not on its face apparent, but it's substantial evidence.

[00:26:29] Speaker 04:
Well, Your Honor, to the extent there is a, again, to the extent that the court finds that there is a legal component to that question, which there is.

[00:26:37] Speaker 04:
Well, sure, what is a legal component?

[00:26:40] Speaker 04:
As Petitioner's Council conceded, it's at the most a mixed question in that we're discussing application of law to facts.

[00:26:51] Speaker 04:
And here, there is no dispute about the legal principle applied, but rather how that principle was applied to the facts in this case.

[00:27:00] Speaker 04:
and substantial evidence as to the factual findings that the administrative judge found and applied the law to, that substantial evidence exists in the record, as I elucidated in the opinion at appendix 28 and 29, where the administrative judge chronicles all of the statements and testimony, for example, by Dr. Etzel as to the failure to timely implement

[00:27:28] Speaker 04:
the strategy on reducing light exposure in children's environments.

[00:27:36] Speaker 02:
The standard or the exception is set forth in the committee report, if my recollection is correct.

[00:27:43] Speaker 02:
Is that right?

[00:27:44] Speaker 04:
There is a committee report that has been often quoted by this court, a Senate report.

[00:27:51] Speaker 02:
Where is the Senate report quoted in here?

[00:27:53] Speaker 04:
It's quoted in chambers

[00:27:59] Speaker 04:
I'm not sure if it's in Chambers 3 or Chambers 2.

[00:28:20] Speaker 04:
However, the Senate report... Is it in your brief?

[00:28:25] Speaker 04:
We quoted it in our brief, yes.

[00:28:27] Speaker 04:
Where?

[00:28:41] Speaker 02:
I don't see it cited in the table, please.

[00:28:53] Speaker 04:
That's all right, I can... The Senate report, Your Honor, just to be clear for the record, is on page 44 of our brief.

[00:29:06] Speaker 04:
44?

[00:29:06] Speaker 04:
Yes, 44 of our brief.

[00:29:11] Speaker 04:
It's also in the administrative judge's opinion, quoted as well.

[00:29:15] Speaker 04:
And there they actually have a full quote of the primary component of the reports, the focus component of the report.

[00:29:23] Speaker 02:
And as I read that Senate report, it says, doing enough to protect the environment.

[00:29:29] Speaker 02:
This is much more specific than that.

[00:29:31] Speaker 02:
It's saying it's not doing enough to prevent lead exposure.

[00:29:35] Speaker 02:
So it's not exactly within the language of the Senate report.

[00:29:40] Speaker 04:
Well, Your Honor, we haven't hung our entire case on the statement in the Senate report as to that statement surely is general.

[00:29:49] Speaker 04:
And there undoubtedly is more specificity in what Dr. Etzel, based on the thin record we had, said during the news in October 2018.

[00:29:59] Speaker 04:
However, again, as the administrative judge found, based on substantial evidence in the record, there is simply a lack of

[00:30:08] Speaker 04:
specificity around EPA's actions or policies.

[00:30:13] Speaker 04:
As Judge Dyke discerned, there is absolutely nothing about the strategy itself in those disclosures, nor is there any disclosure revealing a specific impending harm that would result from the alleged inaction or dilatory action by the agency.

[00:30:33] Speaker 04:
that is that issue in the disclosures as thin as they are.

[00:30:37] Speaker 04:
And if there are no further questions from the court, I can conclude.

[00:30:40] Speaker 01:
Thank you, counsel.

[00:30:42] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:30:45] Speaker 01:
Ms.

[00:30:45] Speaker 01:
Fennestine has two minutes for a bottle.

[00:30:54] Speaker 00:
So first of all, going back to the disclosure on the television stations, it is no less specific because the disclosure was about a harm to potentially millions of children.

[00:31:06] Speaker 00:
The fact that she didn't name a particular school that it was happening at doesn't make it less specific, it just makes it more substantial.

[00:31:14] Speaker 00:
Also, the disclosure was not about the timing.

[00:31:17] Speaker 00:
It was about her fear, as she said, that EPA was not going to do anything about children's lead exposure.

[00:31:24] Speaker 00:
And she has a reasonable belief in that because she had been told by a senior EPA official that the agency had no intention of putting any enforceable measures in the strategy.

[00:31:37] Speaker 00:
because she had been rebuffed repeatedly when she tried to push the strategy forward.

[00:31:42] Speaker 00:
The deadlines kept receding.

[00:31:44] Speaker 00:
And then she was put on administrative leave so that she could do nothing about the strategy or advocate for it being strong.

[00:31:51] Speaker 00:
So at that point in time, which is when you judge a reasonable belief, she had a reasonable belief that there would be no strategy.

[00:31:58] Speaker 00:
And that is what she disclosed.

[00:31:59] Speaker 00:
It was not about a timing issue.

[00:32:02] Speaker 00:
I would like to briefly address the other disclosures that we believe that the administrative judge irrevocably found were not protected or were not connected to a personal action.

[00:32:16] Speaker 01:
I don't think you can do that, counsel.

[00:32:18] Speaker 01:
This is an opportunity to apply, and he didn't raise the other issues.

[00:32:25] Speaker 01:
So you're limited here to the disclosure you just were dealing with.

[00:32:33] Speaker 00:
All right.

[00:32:34] Speaker 00:
OK, I was just trying to address what I didn't have time for before, but I will do what you say.

[00:32:40] Speaker 00:
The disclosure here meets, very easily meets, the three tests in the Chamber's decision, which were that the likelihood of the harm was not just likely, but certain.

[00:32:55] Speaker 00:
The timing of the harm was not future or speculative, but it was right now and ongoing.

[00:33:02] Speaker 00:
And the seriousness of the harm is undisputed.

[00:33:06] Speaker 00:
And as the EPA found in the lead strategy that it eventually issued, exposure lead can cause lifetime mental disabilities in children.

[00:33:17] Speaker 01:
So therefore, Council, as you can see, your time has expired.

[00:33:21] Speaker 01:
All right.

[00:33:22] Speaker 01:
Do you have a final statement?

[00:33:23] Speaker 00:
Yes, so we would ask the court to reverse and remand on its findings about the protected disclosures so that there can be a hearing or if not a hearing at least a decision back at the MSPB as to whether EPA meets its burden of proof on clear and convincing evidence that it did not take the actions it did based on whistleblower disclosures and we also request that the

[00:33:53] Speaker 00:
erroneous finding that the motion to compel discovery was untimely also be reversed so that that can be decided on the merits during the remand.

[00:34:04] Speaker 00:
And that information, if any information comes from that, can be used in deciding the merits of the case on remand.

[00:34:10] Speaker 01:
We have all the other issues that were recited in the brief.

[00:34:14] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:34:15] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:34:15] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:34:16] Speaker 01:
The case is submitted.