Brown v. Davenport

Brown v. Davenport
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 5, 2021 Decided April 21, 2022
Full case name	Mike Brown, Acting Warden v. Ervine Davenport
Docket no.	20-826
Citations	596 U.S. 118 (more)
Argument	Oral argument
Holding
When a state court has ruled on the merits of a state prisoner’s claim, a federal court cannot grant habeas relief without applying both the test this Court outlined in Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, and the one Congress prescribed in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996; the Sixth Circuit erred in granting habeas relief to Mr. Davenport based solely on its assessment that he could satisfy the Brecht standard.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Stephen Breyer Samuel Alito · Sonia Sotomayor Elena Kagan · Neil Gorsuch Brett Kavanaugh · Amy Coney Barrett
Case opinions
Majority	Gorsuch, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett
Dissent	Kagan, joined by Breyer, Sotomayor
Laws applied
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996

Brown v. Davenport, 596 U.S. 118 (2022), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court. The case concerned whether habeas relief may be granted if the Brecht v. Abrahamson test alone is satisfied, or if the application of Chapman v. California by the state courts was unreasonable because of the AEDPA.^[1] The court held that federal courts can not grant habeas relief when state courts have already ruled on a prisoner's claim, unless the situation satisfies the test laid out in Brecht v. Abrahamson, and the test laid out in AEDPA.