Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf
Page Number: 26.0

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

21 

Opinion of the Court 

saving clause because Congress has imposed analogous lim-
itations on analogous claims by state prisoners and—by do-
ing so—has redefined §2255(e)’s implicit habeas benchmark 
with respect to such “factual” and “constitutional” claims. 
See 28 U. S. C. §§2244(b)(2)(A)–(B).  Since, the Government 
asserts, Congress has imposed no analogous limitation on
statutory claims by state prisoners, it has not redefined the 
implicit habeas benchmark with respect to statutory claims 
like  Jones’.    And,  we  should  be  unwilling  to  infer  that 
AEDPA limited such claims without a clearer textual indi-
cation.  The  Government  concludes  that  §2255(h)  renders
§2255 “inadequate or ineffective to test” a federal prisoner’s 
statutory  claim  in  cases  where  the  prisoner  has  already 
filed  one  §2255  motion  and  the  claim  otherwise  satisfies 
pre-AEDPA habeas principles, which generally will require
“a ‘colorable showing of factual innocence.’ ”  McCleskey v. 
Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 495 (1991) (quoting Kuhlmann v. Wil-
son, 477 U. S. 436, 454 (1986) (plurality opinion)).9 

—————— 

9 The Government also argues that Davis v. United States, 417 U. S. 
333 (1974), and Sunal v. Large, 332 U. S. 174 (1947), read together, dic-
tate that only an intervening decision of this Court, rather than a Court 
of Appeals, can work such a change in the law as to justify an otherwise-
barred §2241 petition.  But this attempt to articulate an additional lim-
iting  principle  for  the  Government’s  theory  requires  turning  the  cases 
inside out.  In Davis, where this Court allowed a statutory claim to pro-
ceed under §2255, the relevant narrowing decision came from the Ninth
Circuit.  See 417 U. S., at 341 (discussing United States v. Fox, 454 F. 2d 
593 (CA9 1971)).  In Sunal, where two petitioners’ statutory claims were
barred from proceeding in habeas, it was this Court that had issued the 
relevant  decision.  See  332  U. S.,  at  176  (discussing  Estep  v.  United 
States, 327 U. S. 114 (1946)).  As we have recognized, see Reed v. Farley, 
512 U. S. 339, 354 (1994), the holding of Sunal rested on what we would 
today call the petitioners’ procedural default without cause: By not ap-
pealing their convictions, they had forfeited the argument that ended up
prevailing in Estep, and they had shown no “exceptional circumstances 
which  excuse[d]  their  failure”  to  appeal.    332  U. S.,  at  183–184.    The 
Sunal Court thus had no occasion to definitively resolve whether the pe-
titioners’ claims would have been cognizable in habeas but for their de-