After a state supreme court issues a summary order sustaining a criminal conviction, should a federal habeas court reviewing that decision presume it rests only on the reasons found in a lower state court opinion? The answer is no. The statute governing federal habeas review permits no such "look through" presumption. Nor do traditional principles of appellate review. In fact, we demand the opposite presumption for our work--telling readers that we independently review each case and that our summary affirmances may be read only as signaling agreement with a lower court's judgment and not necessarily its reasons. Because I can discern no good reason to treat the work of our state court colleagues with less respect than we demand for our own, I would reject petitioner's presumption and must respectfully dissent.

Even so, some good news can be found here. While the Court agrees to adopt a "look through" presumption, it does so only after making major modifications to petitioner's proposal. The Court tells us that the presumption should count for little in cases "where the lower state court decision is unreasonable" because it is not "likely" a state supreme court would adopt unreasonable reasoning. Ante, at 9. In cases like that too, the Court explains, federal courts remain free to sustain state court convictions whenever reasonable "ground[s] for affirmance [are] obvious from the state-court record" or appear in the parties' submissions in state court or the federal habeas proceeding. Ibid. Exactly right, and exactly what the law has always demanded. So while the Court takes us on a journey through novel presumptions and rebuttals, it happily returns us in the end very nearly to the place where we began and belonged all along.

Personally, I always thought the Ylst rule should apply.  We said so in our brief in Premo v. Moore, footnote 3 on page 5, the Court applied it, and that application is noted in today's decision on page 8.

The language in the opinion of the Court that Justice Gorsuch refers to in the above passage is in the first paragraph of part III, page 9 of the slip opinion.  It is worth examining with some care.

We also agree that it is more likely that a state supreme court's single word "affirm" rests upon alternative grounds where the lower state court decision is unreasonable than, e.g., where the lower court rested on a state-law procedural ground, as in Ylst. But that is why we have set forth a presumption and not an absolute rule. And the unreasonableness of the lower court's decision itself provides some evidence that makes it less likely the state supreme court adopted the same reasoning. Thus, additional evidence that might not be sufficient to rebut the presumption in a case like Ylst would allow a federal court to conclude that counsel has rebutted the presumption in a case like this one. For instance, a federal habeas court may conclude that counsel has rebutted the presumption on the basis of convincing alternative arguments for affirmance made to the State's highest court or equivalent evidence presented in its briefing to the federal court similarly establishing that the State's highest court relied on a different ground than the lower state court, such as the existence of a valid ground for affirmance that is obvious from the state-court record.

If we look through the state supreme court's summary decision and find a reasonable lower court opinion, the federal court must defer to that reasonable opinion.  End of case.  If the lower court decision is not reasonable, it was likely attacked on that basis in the state supreme court briefing, and the State probably briefed alternate grounds for affirmance.  If so, the Ylst look-through presumption can be rebutted, and the Richter "no reasonable basis for the state court to deny relief" rule kicks in.

The defense side "won" today's case, but it may be a Pyrrhic victory.  How the decision is applied in practice, as always, remains to be seen.

The high court's disposition of the case is to remand to the Eleventh Circuit for "further proceedings consistent with this opinion."  The simple answer, consistent with the opinion, is that the federal district court got it right.  The state superior court considered Wilson's petition, decided among other things that the evidence he claims his lawyer should have presented does not create a reasonable probability of a different result, and that decision is a reasonable one, at least within the range in which reasonable judges can differ.  That, the law commands, is the end of the issue.