[00:00:00] Speaker 00: Good morning, everyone. [00:00:02] Speaker 00: We're delighted to be sitting here in Seattle, especially me, since the temperature is almost 100 in Las Vegas. [00:00:09] Speaker 00: The cases will be called in the order listed on the docket. [00:00:12] Speaker 00: The first four cases, Luna Pannato versus Bondi, Amara Saltillo versus Bondi, Gwyneth Velasquez versus Bondi, and United States versus Frick, have been submitted on the briefs. [00:00:24] Speaker 00: The first case on calendar for argument is United States versus Vasquez-Ramirez. [00:00:30] Speaker 00: Council for Appellant, please approach and proceed. [00:00:44] Speaker 03: Good morning, Your Honors. [00:00:45] Speaker 03: Carter Powers-Baggs on behalf of Oscar Vasquez-Ramirez, the appellant. [00:00:48] Speaker 03: I will endeavor to save two minutes for rebuttal, and I'll watch my own clock. [00:00:52] Speaker 00: Thank you, counsel. [00:00:54] Speaker 03: We're here with the Second Amendment challenge, more fallout from the Supreme Court's decision in Bruin. [00:01:00] Speaker 03: And I would like to touch upon four main areas today. [00:01:04] Speaker 03: The first is the district court's utilization of rational basis review. [00:01:07] Speaker 03: The second is how we square Duarte's en banc opinion with this case. [00:01:13] Speaker 03: And then the other two steps of Bruin, Bruin step one and Bruin step two. [00:01:18] Speaker 03: Quickly with the district court's utilization of rational basis review. [00:01:22] Speaker 03: This was an alarming claim by the district court. [00:01:26] Speaker 03: No circuit has ever found rational basis review would apply in this situation. [00:01:30] Speaker 03: No district court outside of this district court. [00:01:34] Speaker 03: The reason for that is dating back over 100 years to Juan Wing, where it was made clear that plenary immigration power, while in regards to exclusion at the border and who is let in and who is let out within the United States, [00:01:52] Speaker 03: We're still subject to important constitutional limitations, especially if we are going through a criminal justice process. [00:01:59] Speaker 03: Now, moving to Duarte on Bonk. [00:02:01] Speaker 03: It came down recently. [00:02:02] Speaker 03: Both parties submitted notices of authority on this matter. [00:02:06] Speaker 03: I think there's two main takeaways from this case, and that's on Bruin step one and on Bruin step two. [00:02:10] Speaker 03: The first is that at Bruin step one, Mr. Duarte was found to be part of the people as a felon. [00:02:21] Speaker 03: Mr. Vasquez Ramirez, while presented before this case, was not a felon. [00:02:26] Speaker 03: But it is important the reasoning behind that decision. [00:02:29] Speaker 03: In doing so, it endorsed the national community theory in regards to who is part of the people, the same theory that Mr. Vasquez Ramirez, as an individual with sufficient connections, as is laid out in Verdugo or Quidez, [00:02:45] Speaker 03: he meets that standard. [00:02:47] Speaker 03: The second part within the step one analysis is the rejection of the virtuous citizenry theory that was within Vongse and has been used, it's mentioned by the government in briefing, and it has been used to kind of prevent any individual who is not part of voting or holding public office or juror that they can't then have guns. [00:03:11] Speaker 03: pushes back against that and notes that those are collective rights rather than individual rights. [00:03:16] Speaker 03: Mr. Vasquez-Ramirez is asserting a individual right, the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms for lawful self-defense, quite distinct from the more collective rights where we would save those for the virtuous citizenry. [00:03:28] Speaker 01: Moving kind of to this... Is that right, though? [00:03:30] Speaker 01: I mean, there's a lot of indications in Heller and Brulein about [00:03:35] Speaker 01: you know, Americans, citizens, and I don't know, it's not just the language, it's some of the reasoning that gets into, like, why would somebody who's unlawfully present in the United States have rights as among the people? [00:03:52] Speaker 03: Your Honor, there is certainly a lot of that language thrown around in both Heller and Bruin and in a lot of the other cases as well. [00:04:00] Speaker 03: I think there's two issues on that. [00:04:02] Speaker 03: One, that issue of whether or not the [00:04:04] Speaker 03: individual was part or was lawfully present in those cases was just not before the court. [00:04:08] Speaker 01: No, that's true. [00:04:09] Speaker 01: But it wasn't before us in Duarte either. [00:04:12] Speaker 01: So we're trying to look at some of the, not just the language used, but actually the reasoning. [00:04:18] Speaker 01: And it seems that the reasoning is tying the people to someone who's a member of a political community, which has a more precise meaning of somebody who has certain rights that we would regard as the rights of citizens, like the right to be a juror. [00:04:35] Speaker 03: Your honor, I would point the court to Verdugo or Kides, kind of the genesis of this sort of language. [00:04:41] Speaker 03: And in Heller, a very important part of that opinion, because the people as defined in Heller, they were making the leap from individual rights in kind of the Fourth Amendment, the people context to the people within the Second Amendment. [00:04:54] Speaker 03: It was a linchpin of that opinion. [00:04:56] Speaker 03: But Verdugo Archides also notes that individuals who are within our borders, who are not necessarily citizens, are still part of the people and still have been given constitutional protections in other areas. [00:05:07] Speaker 02: I think Verdugo survives Heller and Bruin, which asks us not to look at these concepts in a vacuum, but look to them historically. [00:05:17] Speaker 02: And if you look historically at what the people meant, it was very limited. [00:05:19] Speaker 02: to those that are part of the political community which Likely did not include illegal aliens. [00:05:26] Speaker 03: I think it does include it still survives or do go does still survive and When you look at the founding it was a different it was a different America in some respects But it was also a very similar American in other respects. [00:05:41] Speaker 03: We do have people who are present and [00:05:44] Speaker 03: from not just citizens, also people that just kind of came off boats and arrived and are part of that. [00:05:51] Speaker 02: What group in the founding era would be most analogous to legal aliens that you think were considered part of the people at the founding? [00:06:00] Speaker 03: I think individuals that had arrived rather recently had [00:06:06] Speaker 03: acclimated to the national community, but had not taken the further step of citizenship at that point. [00:06:11] Speaker 03: And there were various methods that you would go through to gain that citizenship. [00:06:15] Speaker 03: And there's just no indication that our historical expert at the district court level found that would separate those two individuals at that time, and certainly not within the Second Amendment context. [00:06:28] Speaker 03: I understand the government. [00:06:31] Speaker 02: It's clear American Indians, for example, were not considered part of the people entitled to the Second Amendment rights. [00:06:36] Speaker 02: Do you agree with that? [00:06:37] Speaker 02: I would agree with that. [00:06:39] Speaker 02: That seems to be somewhat analogous to illegal aliens. [00:06:41] Speaker 02: They're part of this separate sovereign, I forget the exact term they use, it's like a sub-sovereign within the country, so they were not entitled to the same protections. [00:06:53] Speaker 02: Why wouldn't we make that analogy to illegal aliens? [00:06:57] Speaker 03: I think because when we look at what we're defining as the people, we're looking at a sufficient connections test of people that are here for quite some time and we're not making the claim that [00:07:08] Speaker 03: that any individual that just crosses over is suddenly part of the people. [00:07:12] Speaker 03: It's a long-term process where you build these connections. [00:07:15] Speaker 02: But how is Verdugo consistent with what Heller tells us, which we look at the time of the founding and what these terms meant. [00:07:21] Speaker 02: And Verdugo did not do that when they developed that definition. [00:07:27] Speaker 02: I'm not quite under the question. [00:07:28] Speaker 02: Verdugo's definition of what they found to be the part of the people was not historically based, in my assessment. [00:07:36] Speaker 02: It was just kind of, [00:07:37] Speaker 02: like, based off of modern sensibilities of what we think of the people? [00:07:42] Speaker 03: I think that's true in part. [00:07:44] Speaker 03: I think it also was drawing upon the Supreme Court precedent and other cases from that point, which, I mean, we could trace those all the way back to the founding. [00:07:52] Speaker 03: But in regards to a historical definition of the people in Verdugo, it's not my reading of that case that is really invested in the history in regards to the people. [00:08:02] Speaker 00: Council, may I ask you if someone were arrested [00:08:06] Speaker 00: an undocumented person were arrested one day after entering the country illegally with the weapon. [00:08:12] Speaker 00: Would that person be entitled to assert the Second Amendment, in your view? [00:08:17] Speaker 03: Under the theory that we are putting forth, they would have to have sufficient connections. [00:08:23] Speaker 00: In one day, they would have developed sufficient connections? [00:08:27] Speaker 03: That is not our argument. [00:08:29] Speaker 00: At what point would we draw the line [00:08:34] Speaker 00: that someone has sufficient connections to invoke the Second Amendment? [00:08:40] Speaker 03: It is not an easy line to draw. [00:08:42] Speaker 03: I think the court in Verdugo does an admiral job of trying to paint that line in regards to all the factors that it points to. [00:08:49] Speaker 03: I think in the case of Mr. Vasquez, Ramirez, who has been here since he was a little boy, has went to school here, has family here, has done basically everything outside of taking the next step to become a citizen. [00:09:02] Speaker 03: would be part of the people. [00:09:03] Speaker 01: Who would make that decision? [00:09:04] Speaker 01: A court or would a jury decide if somebody had been here long enough to get that protection? [00:09:12] Speaker 03: Your Honor, I have not thought about that specifically. [00:09:14] Speaker 03: I think I would urge the court. [00:09:16] Speaker 03: I would think that a court would probably be in the best situation to decide that, but it may well be a juror question, and I just haven't thought about that. [00:09:23] Speaker 03: I am into my rebuttal time. [00:09:25] Speaker 03: Can I ask you if I may? [00:09:26] Speaker 01: I mean, even if you can get past the people issue, you do have to still deal with Duarte, which has some fairly broad holdings about, essentially, as I read it, how if the legislature deems someone dangerous, they can then conclude categorically that that class of people does not have a right under the Second Amendment. [00:09:48] Speaker 01: And you would think that if felons fall into that category, then illegal aliens may well as well. [00:09:53] Speaker 03: I would point the court to the concept of just a historical tradition. [00:09:58] Speaker 03: And I think when we look at Duarte, that was a found in possession case. [00:10:02] Speaker 03: When we look at this, we have a non-citizen unlawfully present with the United States. [00:10:07] Speaker 03: How we treated those two different things at the founding is quite different in regards to Duarte. [00:10:12] Speaker 03: It was really a case about how much Henry restricts someone who has gone through this process and closing the door for kind of the as applied challenges. [00:10:21] Speaker 03: saying we're not going to go that far. [00:10:23] Speaker 03: While in Mr. Vasquez-Ramirez's case, the non-citizens at the founding were conceptualized. [00:10:30] Speaker 03: It wasn't a completely foreign concept as you look at the Alien Enemies Act, the Alien Friends Act. [00:10:34] Speaker 03: But within those acts, there is no regulation of firearms. [00:10:38] Speaker 03: In fact, the Alien Friends Act even specifically provides for property to be maintained by those individuals and that they could still maintain possession on it after being removed from the United States. [00:10:49] Speaker 03: I am out of time. [00:10:50] Speaker 00: I would urge the court to also will give you a minute or two for rebuttal. [00:10:53] Speaker 00: We help take you over your time. [00:10:55] Speaker 00: So I appreciate that. [00:10:56] Speaker 00: We'll hear from the government. [00:11:04] Speaker 04: Good morning. [00:11:04] Speaker 04: Your honors may please the court. [00:11:06] Speaker 04: My name is Michael Ellis. [00:11:07] Speaker 04: I'm an assistant United States attorney based in Spokane, Washington. [00:11:11] Speaker 04: So in order to prevail on this appeal, Mr. Vasquez Ramirez has to carry the argument on every issue before the court today. [00:11:17] Speaker 04: He has to show that he is entitled to Second Amendment protection in the first place. [00:11:21] Speaker 04: In other words, that he's a member of the people and that he was engaged in covered conduct during his arrest in December of 2021. [00:11:28] Speaker 04: If he overcomes that, he has to show that Bruin applies at all, despite this statute regulating the conduct of immigrants within the United States, which is a function of Congress's plenary authority over immigration and immigration affairs. [00:11:43] Speaker 04: And if he overcomes that, he has to demonstrate that 922G5 is not relevantly similar to colonial-era regulations dispossessing persons who have not attested loyalty and allegiance to the United States and who were not law-abiding from possessing firearms. [00:11:58] Speaker 04: As he cannot overcome any of those challenges, his conviction should be affirmed. [00:12:03] Speaker 02: To me, the people argument and your immigration argument are the same question. [00:12:10] Speaker 02: If someone is part of the people, undoubtedly we have to follow Berlin and it would apply. [00:12:15] Speaker 02: The only question is if illegal immigrants are not part of the people, then rational basis would apply. [00:12:22] Speaker 02: How are they separate inquiries? [00:12:24] Speaker 04: So I think there's separate inquiries because, first of all, the Second Amendment has to apply at all for Mr. Vazquez-Ramirez to have any rights. [00:12:31] Speaker 04: And then, beyond that, in every other case that has addressed Bruin, Duarte, Rahimi, there's not been a debate about whether that, in terms of citizenship and immigration, whether that defendant is a member of the people. [00:12:43] Speaker 04: Reading Duarte and Rahimi, there's no indication those defendants were not United States citizens. [00:12:47] Speaker 04: this statute is functionally different from those statutes because it is focused entirely on an immigration-related matter, whether or not someone... That's not necessarily true. [00:12:58] Speaker 02: I mean, it involves the possession of a firearm, which is a Second Amendment right. [00:13:03] Speaker 04: That is true. [00:13:04] Speaker 04: But if, again, the Supreme Court and this court have, through a long line of cases, adjudicated various constitutional challenges involving other constitutional rights and held that [00:13:14] Speaker 04: despite there being constitutional protections, Congress can make different rules for aliens that might not apply to United States citizens, and therefore different standards of review apply. [00:13:26] Speaker 04: Take cases like Matthews versus Diaz, which is about welfare benefits in the immigration context. [00:13:32] Speaker 04: Rational basis applies. [00:13:34] Speaker 04: Hampton, the ability to serve in the federal civil service for aliens. [00:13:38] Speaker 04: Rational basis. [00:13:39] Speaker 01: But that's because it's based on [00:13:41] Speaker 01: an antecedent determination that the person has lower rights to begin with under that. [00:13:47] Speaker 01: I mean, no one's ever said that with respect to the Second Amendment yet in the Ninth Circuit. [00:13:52] Speaker 01: And so it doesn't seem to advance the argument, really, to say that Congress has plenary power over immigration, because they don't have plenary power to violate somebody's rights if they have one. [00:14:01] Speaker 01: So we get back to the same question, which is, are they part of the people, or is Duarte resolve it, or some other argument? [00:14:08] Speaker 01: But I don't think it really [00:14:09] Speaker 01: helps to just say immigration, immigration. [00:14:12] Speaker 04: And I think it's a secondary question. [00:14:14] Speaker 04: After whether the Second Amendment applies at all, from the government's perspective, it's then a secondary question as to what standard applies for how Congress can regulate the Second Amendment rights of a given person. [00:14:26] Speaker 00: Could we address directly whether the Second Amendment applies in this scenario? [00:14:32] Speaker 00: Don't we generally focus on the activity that's being regulated to determine whether or not its Second Amendment applies? [00:14:39] Speaker 04: Yeah, so there's two parts of this. [00:14:41] Speaker 04: One is a person has to be a member of the people because the Second Amendment only applies to the people as opposed to other constitutional rights covering persons, the accused, citizens. [00:14:50] Speaker 04: So you have to be a member of the people to merit Second Amendment rights. [00:14:54] Speaker 04: And then, yes, another part of that test is you have to be engaged in covered conduct. [00:14:58] Speaker 04: So here, Mr. Vazquez-Ramirez doesn't satisfy either of those. [00:15:01] Speaker 04: As was addressed earlier, the Supreme Court has repeatedly, in Heller, Bruin, Rahimi, [00:15:06] Speaker 04: limited the Second Amendment discussion to law-abiding citizens and Americans, and as this court just noted around a month ago in Duarte, that language has meaning. [00:15:18] Speaker 04: This court went out of its way to note that Duarte Bruin used the term law-abiding citizen, I think, 14 times. [00:15:26] Speaker 04: Again, was it necessary for those decisions? [00:15:30] Speaker 04: No, but this court is bound by well-considered dicta from the Supreme Court, [00:15:35] Speaker 00: But the focus wasn't really on the citizen part of it. [00:15:41] Speaker 00: It was mentioned, but not really. [00:15:44] Speaker 00: There was no expostulation on it. [00:15:47] Speaker 00: It just was noted that it's citizen. [00:15:50] Speaker 00: But there was no engagement in what that actually means. [00:15:53] Speaker 00: So that's what we're grappling with now. [00:15:55] Speaker 00: What does that actually mean for purposes of the Second Amendment? [00:15:59] Speaker 04: So for the purposes of the Second Amendment, it means that if you're not a citizen, [00:16:04] Speaker 04: You do not have a member of the people for the purpose of having. [00:16:09] Speaker 00: What case says that explicitly? [00:16:10] Speaker 04: So explicitly in terms of Heller, Bruin, and Rahimi repeatedly using the word citizen to describe the scope of the people who have Second Amendment rights. [00:16:20] Speaker 04: So again, as Your Honor noted, that was not a necessary determination for those cases. [00:16:24] Speaker 04: and perhaps if it had been a one-off, a single passing reference, but again they use that term over and over and over. [00:16:31] Speaker 01: What about somebody with a green card, you know, who's present in the United States lawfully, would they have a second amendment right? [00:16:36] Speaker 04: So they would have a better claim perhaps than Mr. Vasquez Ramirez. [00:16:41] Speaker 04: If you take citizen at face value, then no, but that person with a green card is also not illegally and unlawfully in the United States. [00:16:48] Speaker 01: They're not covered by the [00:16:50] Speaker 01: criminal prohibition. [00:16:51] Speaker 04: Exactly. [00:16:52] Speaker 04: So there may be middle ground where someone may not have a constitutional right, but may also not have their possession of firearms criminally prohibited by current congressional statute. [00:17:02] Speaker 01: Your friend on the other side points out that in Heller, the Supreme Court referenced, quoted, or do go, or keyed as including the sufficient connection to the United States language. [00:17:14] Speaker 01: What do you make of that language? [00:17:16] Speaker 04: So a couple of things. [00:17:17] Speaker 04: First is that neither Verdugo nor any other Supreme Court case has explicitly found that the people do include unlawful aliens. [00:17:24] Speaker 04: It's been repeatedly assumed throughout a series of cases, both before this court and the Supreme Court, but never explicitly decided. [00:17:31] Speaker 00: It's not been explicitly decided the other way either. [00:17:33] Speaker 04: That is true. [00:17:35] Speaker 04: I think that some of the keys are, as the court referenced during the earlier argument, [00:17:41] Speaker 04: It does seem to turn on an individual's political connections to the United States. [00:17:46] Speaker 04: That's where Heller comes in after Verdugo or Kides and says the people unambiguously refers to members of the political community. [00:17:54] Speaker 04: And as the court again was referencing earlier, [00:17:57] Speaker 04: That's a standard that can be adjudicated. [00:17:59] Speaker 04: Everyone's going to know what connections you have to the political community. [00:18:03] Speaker 04: Social connections are extremely hard to pin down when someone may have crossed that line from being not a member of the people to a member of the people. [00:18:12] Speaker 04: And that is really important if the court contemplates how someone, you know, an actual person may be contemplating whether they have Second Amendment rights, because how is that person supposed to know [00:18:22] Speaker 04: How long have I been here? [00:18:24] Speaker 04: How long work experience do I have here? [00:18:26] Speaker 04: When am I going to qualify to be a member of the people? [00:18:29] Speaker 04: That's an extremely fact-specific inquiry that doesn't really lend itself to a test determining whether any specific individual has Second Amendment rights. [00:18:39] Speaker 04: Political connections does. [00:18:41] Speaker 04: Everyone's going to know if you have the right to serve on a jury or these various other factors. [00:18:46] Speaker 00: But by its terms, wouldn't that eliminate someone who doesn't have status? [00:18:53] Speaker 04: Perhaps if that was the sole parts of the test, I know this court in cases like Ibrahim have discussed the importance of being authorized by the United States government at one time or another to reside in the United States, maybe other factors at play, but importantly for this case, [00:19:10] Speaker 04: Mr. Vasquez-Ramirez has none of those factors. [00:19:12] Speaker 04: He's never been allowed to be in the United States. [00:19:15] Speaker 04: He's never been authorized to be present. [00:19:17] Speaker 04: And he has none of those political connections. [00:19:19] Speaker 04: So again, for the purpose of this case, whatever follow-on cases may happen with future hypothetical defendants, for this case, Mr. Vasquez-Ramirez can't tick any of those boxes. [00:19:28] Speaker 02: So what I find troubling about the argument, though, is the people is used in the Fourth Amendment context as well. [00:19:35] Speaker 02: And if we follow the maxim that the same term means the same thing, [00:19:40] Speaker 02: So is the government's position that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to illegal aliens? [00:19:47] Speaker 04: So I think it depends on the... Well, first of all, the Fifth Circuit has been the only circuit I've found that's really addressed that particular point. [00:19:54] Speaker 04: And the Fifth Circuit found that because of the nature of those rights, protective versus affirmative, it would be rational to perhaps draw a distinction between that term. [00:20:04] Speaker 02: As for... Did you find that persuasive? [00:20:06] Speaker 02: I'm not sure I did, but... [00:20:08] Speaker 04: I think at the end of the day, the Supreme Court has, post-Verdugo, which was a Fourth Amendment case, discussed the people in Second Amendment terms in a slightly different way, with this repeated emphasis on citizenship, with this new emphasis on explicitly the political community. [00:20:25] Speaker 04: And so perhaps the answer is that they are in different scope. [00:20:28] Speaker 04: I think for the purpose of this case, the court does not need to go that far, because for this case, the court only needs to address the Second Amendment use of the term people, which again, the Supreme Court has repeatedly tied to the term citizen. [00:20:43] Speaker 04: So with that, unless the court has any other questions for me. [00:20:48] Speaker 00: It appears not. [00:20:48] Speaker 00: Thank you, counsel. [00:20:49] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:20:49] Speaker 00: Rebuttal, let's have two minutes. [00:21:00] Speaker 03: I'd like to just briefly touch upon the people. [00:21:02] Speaker 03: As Your Honor just pointed out, the people has to mean the same thing throughout the Bill of Rights. [00:21:07] Speaker 03: It was adopted at the same time. [00:21:09] Speaker 03: Our entire discussion of Heller relies upon the fact that the people means the same thing throughout the Bill of Rights. [00:21:15] Speaker 00: Well, the difficulty with that argument is the Supreme Court has not used the term citizen when talking about the rights under the Fourth Amendment. [00:21:24] Speaker 00: So doesn't that justify [00:21:27] Speaker 00: a different meaning in those amendments? [00:21:30] Speaker 03: I think they have not used it in terms of the Fourth Amendment, and I think it really calls into question what does the Second Amendment mean then, because it has to mean the same thing across the board. [00:21:42] Speaker 03: I would just push... Does it? [00:21:45] Speaker 00: If the Supreme Court says for the Second Amendment, being a citizen is important, but does not [00:21:53] Speaker 00: express that same view in the Fourth Amendment, why does it have to mean the same thing if the Supreme Court has not defined them in the same way? [00:22:01] Speaker 03: It would mean the same thing because of just statutory canons of how we interpret text as a whole. [00:22:08] Speaker 00: But those are just tools that we use. [00:22:11] Speaker 00: That's not definitive in terms of being binding on us. [00:22:15] Speaker 03: Not definitive in terms of being binding upon the court, but I think definitive in terms of how they are used in Heller to [00:22:23] Speaker 03: underpin that entire opinion, making the Second Amendment for the first time and from the Supreme Court an individual right. [00:22:30] Speaker 03: If we take Heller at face value, we also have to take the whole opinion. [00:22:36] Speaker 00: Do we disregard the use of the term citizen over and over in the Second Amendment cases? [00:22:42] Speaker 00: Do we just pretend that that doesn't exist in those cases? [00:22:47] Speaker 03: I wouldn't pretend it doesn't exist, but two quick things before I run out of time. [00:22:51] Speaker 03: One is that, again, citizens were not before the court at that time. [00:22:53] Speaker 03: And I think when you look at law abiding citizen as a language, it is pointing to what is presumed beyond doubt as the second act of protections, not necessarily the full contours of that right. [00:23:05] Speaker 03: I am out of time. [00:23:06] Speaker 03: Thank you so much. [00:23:06] Speaker 02: Can I ask one quick question? [00:23:07] Speaker 02: So is there any case that says that the Fourth Amendment does directly apply to illegal aliens? [00:23:12] Speaker 02: And so if that would contradict this? [00:23:16] Speaker 03: I read Verduga-Rikitas as saying that, although it is [00:23:20] Speaker 03: not as explicit. [00:23:22] Speaker 02: Was that an illegal alien, Verdugo? [00:23:24] Speaker 02: I thought it was a ship or something, but I can't remember. [00:23:28] Speaker 02: It's been a while. [00:23:29] Speaker 03: I apologize. [00:23:30] Speaker 03: I don't want to speak definitively on that. [00:23:32] Speaker 02: Never mind. [00:23:32] Speaker 03: That's fine. [00:23:34] Speaker 03: I read Verdugo as allowing for Fourth Amendment rights for non-citizens, if you follow through on that. [00:23:38] Speaker 03: Thank you so much for your time, Governor. [00:23:39] Speaker 00: Thank you to both counsel for your helpful arguments. [00:23:42] Speaker 00: The case just argued is submitted for a decision by the court.