Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf
Page Number: 14.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

9 

Opinion of the Court 

crime,” in violation of then-existing 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1), 
more narrowly than many Circuits’ previous case law.  See 
516 U. S., at 142 (describing the Circuits’ approaches).  Un-
der this Court’s §2255 precedent, Bailey’s narrowing inter-
pretation  was  grounds  for  a  collateral  attack  by  federal 
prisoners who had been convicted under the Courts of Ap-
peals’  broader  interpretations.    See  Davis,  417  U. S.,  at 
342–347 (holding a claim of legal error based on an inter-
vening change in statutory interpretation cognizable under 
§2255).  Many prisoners with Bailey claims, however, had 
already  exhausted  their  first  §2255  motion,  and  Bailey’s 
statutory holding plainly did not satisfy either of §2255(h)’s
conditions for a second or successive motion. 

Several Courts of Appeals found a workaround for those 
prisoners in the saving clause.  With minor differences in 
reasoning  and  wording,  they  held  that  §2255  was  “inade-
quate  and  ineffective”  under  the  saving  clause—and  that
§2241 was therefore available—when AEDPA’s second-or-
successive restrictions barred a prisoner from seeking relief
based  on  a  newly  adopted  narrowing  interpretation  of  a 
criminal statute that circuit precedent had foreclosed at the 
time of the prisoner’s trial, appeal, and first §2255 motion.
This  application  of  the  saving  clause  took  shape  in  In re 
Dorsainvil,  119  F. 3d  245,  251  (CA3  1997);  Triestman  v. 
United States, 124 F. 3d 361, 378–380 (CA2 1997); and In re 
Davenport, 147 F. 3d 605, 609–611 (CA7 1998), and it was 
later adopted by most of the other Circuits.  See Ivy v. Pon-
tesso, 328 F. 3d 1057, 1059–1060 (CA9 2003); Martin v. Pe-
rez, 319 F. 3d 799, 804–805 (CA6 2003); Reyes–Requena v. 
United States, 243 F. 3d 893, 904 (CA5 2001); In re Jones, 
226  F. 3d  328,  333–334  (CA4  2000);  Wofford  v.  Scott,  177 
F. 3d  1236,  1242–1245  (CA11  1999),  overruled  by  McCar-
than v. Director of Goodwill Industries–Suncoast, Inc., 851 
F. 3d 1076 (CA11 2017) (en banc); but see Prost v. Anderson, 
636 F. 3d 578, 584–595 (CA10 2011) (Gorsuch, J.) (holding