Since AEDPA was passed in 1996, it’s become harder and harder for habeas petitioners to win even the most glaring of constitutional violations. See Stephen R. Reinhardt, The Demise of Habeas Corpus and the Rise of Qualified Immunity: The Court's Ever Increasing Limitations on the Development and Enforcement of Constitutional Rights and Some Particularly Unfortunate Consequences, 113 Mich. L. Rev. 1219 (2015), available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol113/iss7/3
Today’s Supreme Court decision in Rivers v. Guerro, No. 23-1345 (June 12, 2025) (available here), makes it more difficult for some habeas petitioners to vindicate their constitutional rights. After Petitioner Danny Rivers was convicted in Texas state court of sexual abuse charges and his direct appeal was affirmed, he sought habeas relief in federal court asserting a variety of constitutional claims, including prosecutor misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel. The district court denied his petition and the Fifth Circuit granted him a certificate of appealability on his IAC claim.
While his appeal was pending in the Fifth, Rivers obtained his trial counsel’s file, which contained a state investigator’s report that he believed was exculpatory. After the Fifth denied his request to supplement the record, Rivers filed a second habeas petition in the district court, which was dismissed as second or successive, and transferred the case to the Fifth for authorization. Rivers appealed the transfer and the Fifth affirmed, holding that the fact Rivers’s first petition was still on appeal did not permit him to circumvent the requirements for successive petitions under §2244 as to his second filing.
In an unanimous opinion written by Justice Jackson, the Court affirmed, explaining:
Incarcerated individuals who seek to challenge their imprisonment through a federal habeas petition are generally afforded one opportunity to do so. See 28 U. S. C. §§2254, 2244. Before a federal court can address a petitioner’s second or successive federal habeas filing on the merits, the incarcerated filer must clear strict procedural hurdles that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) erects. See §2244(b). This case presents the question of how to classify a second-in-time habeas filing when the judgment denying the first application is under review on appeal. Does that second habeas-related submission qualify as a second or successive application, thereby triggering §2244(b)’s stringent gatekeeping requirements?
We hold that, in general, once the district court has entered its judgment with respect to the first habeas petition, a second-in-time application qualifies as “second or successive” and is thus properly subject to the requirements of §2244(b).