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Text: We conclude that federal habeas law employs a “look through” presumption. That conclusion has parallels in this Court’s precedent. In Ylst v. Nunnemaker, a defendant, convicted in a California state court of murder, appealed his conviction to the state appeals court where he raised a constitutional claim based on Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). 501 U. S. 797, 799–800 (1991). The appeals court rejected that claim, writing that “ ‘an objection based upon a Miranda violation cannot be raised for the first time on appeal.’ ” Id., at 799. The defendant then similarly challenged his conviction in the California Supreme Court and on collateral review in several state courts (including once again the California Supreme Court). In each of these latter instances the state court denied the defendant relief (or review). In each instance the court did so without an opinion or other explanation. Id., at 799–800.

Subsequently, the defendant asked a federal habeas court to review his constitutional claim. Id., at 800. The higher state courts had given no reason for their decision. And this Court ultimately had to decide how the federal court was to find the state court’s reasoning in those circumstances. Should it have “looked through” the unreasoned decisions to the state procedural ground articulated in the appeals court or should it have used a different method?

In answering that question Justice Scalia wrote the following for the Court: “The problem we face arises, of course, because many formulary orders are not meant to convey anything as to the reason for the decision. Attributing a reason is therefore both difficult and artificial. We think that the attribution necessary for federal habeas purposes can be facilitated, and sound results more often assured, by applying the following presumption: Where there has been one reasoned state judgment rejecting a federal claim, later unexplained orders upholding that judgment or rejecting the same claim rest upon the same ground. If an earlier opinion ‘fairly appear[s] to rest primarily upon federal law,’ we will presume that no procedural default has been invoked by a subsequent unexplained order that leaves the judgment or its consequences in place. Similarly where, as here, the last reasoned opinion on the claim explicitly imposes a procedural default, we will presume that a later decision rejecting the claim did not silently disregard that bar and consider the merits.” Id., at 803 (citation omitted).

Since Ylst, every Circuit to have considered the matter has applied this presumption, often called the “look through” presumption, but for the Eleventh Circuit—even where the state courts did not apply a procedural bar to review. See supra, at 4–5. And most Federal Circuits applied it prior to Ylst. See Ylst, supra, at 803 (citing Prihoda v. McCaughtry, 910 F. 2d 1379, 1383 (CA7 1990); Harmon v. Barton, 894 F. 2d 1268, 1272 (CA11 1990); Evans v. Thompson, 881 F. 2d 117, 123, n. 2 (CA4 1989); Ellis v. Lynaugh, 873 F. 2d 830, 838 (CA5 1989)).

That is not surprising in light of the fact that the “look through” presumption is often realistic, for state higher courts often (but certainly not always, see Redmon v. Johnson, 2018 WL 415714 (Ga., Jan. 16, 2018)) write “denied” or “affirmed” or “dismissed” when they have examined the lower court’s reasoning and found nothing significant with which they disagree.

Moreover, a “look through” presumption is often (but not always) more efficiently applied than a contrary approach—an approach, for example, that would require a federal habeas court to imagine what might have been the state court’s supportive reasoning. The latter task may prove particularly difficult where the issue involves state law, such as state procedural rules that may constrain the scope of a reviewing court’s summary decision, a matter in which a federal judge often lacks comparative expertise. See Ylst, supra, at 805.

The State points to a later case, Harrington v. Richter, 562 U. S. 86 (2011), which, it says, controls here instead of Ylst. In its view, Ylst should apply, at most, to cases in which the federal habeas court is trying to determine whether a state-court decision without opinion rested on a state procedural ground (for example, a procedural default) or whether the state court has reached the merits of a federal issue. In support, it notes that Richter held that the state-court decisions to which AEDPA refers include summary dispositions, i.e., decisions without opinion. Richter added that “determining whether a state court’s decision resulted from an unreasonable legal or factual conclusion does not require that there be an opinion from the state court explaining the state court’s reasoning.” 562 U. S., at 98.

Richter then said that, where “a state court’s decision is unaccompanied by an explanation, the habeas petitioner’s burden still must be met by showing there was no reasonable basis for the state court to deny relief.” Ibid. And the Court concluded that, when “a federal claim has been presented to a state court and the state court has denied relief, it may be presumed that the state court adjudicated the claim on the merits in the absence of any indication or state-law procedural principles to the contrary.” Id., at 99.

In our view, however, Richter does not control here. For one thing, Richter did not directly concern the issue before us—whether to “look through” the silent state higher court opinion to the reasoned opinion of a lower court in order to determine the reasons for the higher court’s decision. Indeed, it could not have considered that matter, for in Richter, there was no lower court opinion to look to. That is because the convicted defendant sought to raise his federal constitutional claim for the first time in the California Supreme Court (via a direct petition for habeas corpus, as California law permits). Id., at 96.

For another thing, Richter does not say the reasoning of Ylst does not apply in the context of an unexplained decision on the merits. To the contrary, the Court noted that it was setting forth a presumption, which “may be overcome when there is reason to think some other explanation for the state court’s decision is more likely.” Richter, supra, at 99–100. And it referred in support to Ylst, 501 U. S., at 803.

Further, we have “looked through” to lower court decisions in cases involving the merits. See, e.g., Premo v. Moore, 562 U. S. 115, 123–133 (2011); Sears v. Upton, 561 U. S. 945, 951–956 (2010) (per curiam). Indeed, we decided one of those cases, Premo, on the same day we decided Richter. And in our opinion in Richter we referred to Premo. 562 U. S., at 91. Had we intended Richter’s “could have supported” framework to apply even where there is a reasoned decision by a lower state court, our opinion in Premo would have looked very different. We did not even cite the reviewing state court’s summary affirmance. Instead, we focused exclusively on the actual reasons given by the lower state court, and we deferred to those reasons under AEDPA. 562 U. S., at 132 (“The state postconviction court’s decision involved no unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent”).