Chaidez v. United States

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2012 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR

THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

No. 11–820. Argued November 1, 2012—Decided February 20, 2013

Immigration officials initiated removal proceedings against petitioner

Chaidez in 2009 upon learning that she had pleaded guilty to mail

fraud in 2004. To avoid removal, she sought to overturn that convic-

tion by filing a petition for a writ of coram nobis, contending that her

former attorney’s failure to advise her of the guilty plea’s immigra-

tion consequences constituted ineffective assistance of counsel under

the Sixth Amendment. While her petition was pending, this Court

held in Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. ___, that the Sixth Amendment

requires defense attorneys to inform non-citizen clients of the depor-

tation risks of guilty pleas. The District Court vacated Chaidez’s

conviction, determining that Padilla did not announce a “new rule”

under Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, and thus applied to Chaidez’s

case. The Seventh Circuit reversed, holding that Padilla had de-

clared a new rule and should not apply in a challenge to a final con-

viction.

Held: Padilla does not apply retroactively to cases already final on di-

rect review. Pp. 3−15.

(a) Under Teague, a person whose conviction is already final may

not benefit from a new rule of criminal procedure on collateral re-

view. A “case announces a new rule if the result was not dictated by

precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became fi-

nal.” Teague, 489 U. S., at 301. And a holding is not so dictated un-

less it would have been “apparent to all reasonable jurists.” Lambrix

v. Singletary, 520 U. S. 518, 527−528. At the same time, a case does

not “announce a new rule, [when] it [is] merely an application of the

principle that governed” a prior decision to a different set of facts.

Teague, 489 U. S., at 307. Thus, garden-variety applications of the

test in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, for assessing ineffec-

2 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

Syllabus

tive assistance claims do not produce new rules, id., at 687−688.

But Padilla did more than just apply Strickland’s general standard

to yet another factual situation. Before deciding if failing to inform a

client about the risk of deportation “fell below [Strickland’s] objective

standard of reasonableness,” 466 U. S., at 688, Padilla first consid-

ered the threshold question whether advice about deportation was

“categorically removed” from the scope of the Sixth Amendment right

to counsel because it involved only a “collateral consequence” of a

conviction, rather than a component of a criminal sentence, 559 U. S.,

at ___. That is, prior to asking how the Strickland test applied, Pa-

dilla asked whether that test applied at all.

That preliminary question came to the Court unsettled. Hill v.

Lockhart, 474 U. S. 52, had explicitly left open whether the Sixth

Amendment right extends to collateral consequences. That left the

issue to the state and lower federal courts, and they almost unani-

mously concluded that the Sixth Amendment does not require attor-

neys to inform their clients of a conviction’s collateral consequences,

including deportation. Padilla’s contrary ruling thus answered an

open question about the Sixth Amendment’s reach, in a way that al-

tered the law of most jurisdictions. In so doing, Padilla broke new

ground and imposed a new obligation. Pp. 3−11.

(b) Chaidez argues that Padilla did no more than apply Strickland

to a new set of facts. But she ignores that Padilla had to develop new

law to determine that Strickland applied at all. The few lower court

decisions she cites held only that a lawyer may not affirmatively mis-

represent his expertise or otherwise actively mislead his client as to

any important matter. Those rulings do not apply to her case, and

they do not show that all reasonable judges thought that lawyers had

to advise their clients about deportation risks. Neither does INS v.

St. Cyr, 533 U. S. 289, have any relevance here. In saying that a rea-

sonably competent lawyer would tell a non-citizen client about a

guilty plea’s deportation consequences, St. Cyr did not determine that

the Sixth Amendment requires a lawyer to provide such information.

It took Padilla to decide that question. Pp. 11–15.

655 F. 3d 684, affirmed.

KAGAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,

C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, BREYER, and ALITO, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J.,

filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed a

dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG, J., joined.

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 1

Opinion of the Court

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash­

ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order

that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 11–820

_________________

ROSELVA CHAIDEZ, PETITIONER v. UNITED STATES

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

[February 20, 2013]

JUSTICE KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

In Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. ___ (2010), this Court

held that the Sixth Amendment requires an attorney for

a criminal defendant to provide advice about the risk of

deportation arising from a guilty plea. We consider here

whether that ruling applies retroactively, so that a person

whose conviction became final before we decided Padilla

can benefit from it. We conclude that, under the prin­

ciples set out in Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989),

Padilla does not have retroactive effect.

I

Petitioner Roselva Chaidez hails from Mexico, but be­

came a lawful permanent resident of the United States

in 1977. About 20 years later, she helped to defraud an

automobile insurance company out of $26,000. After

federal agents uncovered the scheme, Chaidez pleaded

guilty to two counts of mail fraud, in violation of 18

U. S. C. §1341. The District Court sentenced her to four

years of probation and ordered her to pay restitution.

Chaidez’s conviction became final in 2004.

Under federal immigration law, the offenses to which

Chaidez pleaded guilty are “aggravated felonies,” subject­

2 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

ing her to mandatory removal from this country. See 8

U. S. C. §§1101(a)(43)(M)(i), 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). But accord­

ing to Chaidez, her attorney never advised her of that fact,

and at the time of her plea she remained ignorant of it.

Immigration officials initiated removal proceedings

against Chaidez in 2009, after an application she made for

citizenship alerted them to her prior conviction. To avoid

removal, Chaidez sought to overturn that conviction by

filing a petition for a writ of coram nobis in Federal Dis­

trict Court.1 She argued that her former attorney’s failure

to advise her of the immigration consequences of pleading

guilty constituted ineffective assistance of counsel under

the Sixth Amendment.

While Chaidez’s petition was pending, this Court decided

Padilla. Our ruling vindicated Chaidez’s view of the

Sixth Amendment: We held that criminal defense attor­

neys must inform non-citizen clients of the risks of depor­

tation arising from guilty pleas. See 559 U. S., at ___ (slip

op., at 9). But the Government argued that Chaidez could

not benefit from Padilla because it announced a “new

rule” and, under Teague, such rules do not apply in collat­

eral challenges to already-final convictions.

The District Court determined that Padilla “did not

announce a new rule for Teague purposes,” and therefore

should apply to Chaidez’s case. 730 F. Supp. 2d 896, 904

(ND Ill. 2010). It then found that Chaidez’s counsel had

performed deficiently under Padilla and that Chaidez

suffered prejudice as a result. Accordingly, the court

vacated Chaidez’s conviction. See No. 03 CR 636–6, 2010

——————

1 A petition for a writ of coram nobis provides a way to collaterally

attack a criminal conviction for a person, like Chaidez, who is no longer

“in custody” and therefore cannot seek habeas relief under 28 U. S. C.

§2255 or §2241. See United States v. Morgan, 346 U. S. 502, 507, 510–

511 (1954). Chaidez and the Government agree that nothing in this

case turns on the difference between a coram nobis petition and a

habeas petition, and we assume without deciding that they are correct.

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 3

Opinion of the Court

WL 3979664 (ND Ill., Oct. 6, 2010).

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh

Circuit reversed, holding that Padilla had declared a new

rule and so should not apply in a challenge to a final con­

viction. “Before Padilla,” the Seventh Circuit reasoned,

“the [Supreme] Court had never held that the Sixth

Amendment requires a criminal defense attorney to pro­

vide advice about matters not directly related to [a]

client’s criminal prosecution,” including the risks of deporta­

tion. 655 F. 3d 684, 693 (2011). And state and lower

federal courts had uniformly concluded that an attorney

need not give “advice concerning [such a] collateral (as

opposed to direct) consequenc[e] of a guilty plea.” Id., at

690. According to the Seventh Circuit, Padilla’s holding

was new because it ran counter to that widely accepted

“distinction between direct and collateral consequences.”

655 F. 3d, at 691. Judge Williams dissented. Agreeing

with the Third Circuit’s view, she argued that Padilla

“broke no new ground” because it merely applied estab­

lished law about a lawyer’s “duty to consult” with a client.

655 F. 3d, at 695 (quoting United States v. Orocio, 645

F. 3d 630, 638–639 (CA3 2011) (internal quotation marks

omitted)).

We granted certiorari, 566 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a

split among federal and state courts on whether Padilla

applies retroactively.2 Holding that it does not, we affirm

the Seventh Circuit.

II

Teague makes the retroactivity of our criminal proce­

——————

2 Compare 655 F. 3d 684 (CA7 2011) (case below) (not retroactive);

United States v. Amer, 681 F. 3d 211 (CA5 2012) (same); United States

v. Chang Hong, 671 F. 3d 1147 (CA10 2011) (same); State v. Gaitan,

209 N. J. 339, 37 A. 3d 1089 (2012) (same), with United States

v. Orocio, 645 F. 3d 630 (CA3 2011) (retroactive); Commonwealth v.

Clarke, 460 Mass. 30, 949 N. E. 2d 892 (2011) (same).

4 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

dure decisions turn on whether they are novel. When we

announce a “new rule,” a person whose conviction is al­

ready final may not benefit from the decision in a habeas

or similar proceeding.3 Only when we apply a settled rule

may a person avail herself of the decision on collateral

review. Here, Chaidez filed her coram nobis petition five

years after her guilty plea became final. Her challenge

therefore fails if Padilla declared a new rule.

“[A] case announces a new rule,” Teague explained,

“when it breaks new ground or imposes a new obligation”

on the government. 489 U. S., at 301. “To put it differ­

ently,” we continued, “a case announces a new rule if the

result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time

the defendant’s conviction became final.” Ibid. And a

holding is not so dictated, we later stated, unless it would

have been “apparent to all reasonable jurists.” Lambrix v.

Singletary, 520 U. S. 518, 527–528 (1997).

But that account has a flipside. Teague also made clear

that a case does not “announce a new rule, [when] it ‘[is]

merely an application of the principle that governed’ ” a

prior decision to a different set of facts. 489 U. S., at 307

(quoting Yates v. Aiken, 484 U. S. 211, 217 (1988)). As

JUSTICE KENNEDY has explained, “[w]here the beginning

point” of our analysis is a rule of “general application, a

rule designed for the specific purpose of evaluating a

myriad of factual contexts, it will be the infrequent case

that yields a result so novel that it forges a new rule, one

not dictated by precedent.” Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277,

309 (1992) (concurring in judgment); see also Williams v.

Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 391 (2000). Otherwise said, when

all we do is apply a general standard to the kind of factual

——————

3 Teague stated two exceptions: “[W]atershed rules of criminal proce­

dure” and rules placing “conduct beyond the power of the [government]

to proscribe” apply on collateral review, even if novel. 489 U. S., at 311

(internal quotation marks omitted). Chaidez does not argue that either

of those exceptions is relevant here.

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 5

Opinion of the Court

circumstances it was meant to address, we will rarely

state a new rule for Teague purposes.

Because that is so, garden-variety applications of the

test in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984), for

assessing claims of ineffective assistance of counsel do

not produce new rules. In Strickland, we held that legal

representation violates the Sixth Amendment if it falls

“below an objective standard of reasonableness,” as indi­

cated by “prevailing professional norms,” and the defend­

ant suffers prejudice as a result. Id., at 687–688. That

standard, we later concluded, “provides sufficient guidance

for resolving virtually all” claims of ineffective assistance,

even though their particular circumstances will differ.

Williams, 529 U. S., at 391. And so we have granted relief

under Strickland in diverse contexts without ever suggest­

ing that doing so required a new rule. See, e.g., ibid.;

Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U. S. 374 (2005); Wiggins v. Smith,

539 U. S. 510 (2003).4 In like manner, Padilla would not

have created a new rule had it only applied Strickland’s

general standard to yet another factual situation—that is,

had Padilla merely made clear that a lawyer who neglects

to inform a client about the risk of deportation is profes­

sionally incompetent.

But Padilla did something more. Before deciding if

failing to provide such advice “fell below an objective stan­

dard of reasonableness,” Padilla considered a threshold

question: Was advice about deportation “categorically

removed” from the scope of the Sixth Amendment right to

counsel because it involved only a “collateral consequence”

of a conviction, rather than a component of the criminal

——————

4 We did not consider Teague in Williams, Rompilla, and Wiggins, but

we granted habeas relief pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1) because

state courts had unreasonably applied “clearly established” law. And,

as we have explained, “clearly established” law is not “new” within the

meaning of Teague. See Williams, 529 U. S., at 412.

6 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

sentence? 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7–9).5 In other

words, prior to asking how the Strickland test applied

(“Did this attorney act unreasonably?”), Padilla asked

whether the Strickland test applied (“Should we even

evaluate if this attorney acted unreasonably?”). And as we

will describe, that preliminary question about Strickland’s

ambit came to the Padilla Court unsettled—so that the

Court’s answer (“Yes, Strickland governs here”) required a

new rule.

The relevant background begins with our decision in

Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U. S. 52 (1985), which explicitly left

open whether advice concerning a collateral consequence

must satisfy Sixth Amendment requirements. Hill pleaded

guilty to first-degree murder after his attorney misin­

formed him about his parole eligibility. In addressing his

claim of ineffective assistance, we first held that the

Strickland standard extends generally to the plea process.

See Hill, 474 U. S., at 57. We then determined, however,

that Hill had failed to allege prejudice from the lawyer’s

error and so could not prevail under that standard. See

id., at 60. That conclusion allowed us to avoid another,

more categorical question: whether advice about parole

(however inadequate and prejudicial) could possibly vio­

late the Sixth Amendment. The Court of Appeals, we

noted, had held “that parole eligibility is a collateral ra­

ther than a direct consequence of a guilty plea, of which a

defendant need not be informed.” Id., at 55. But our

ruling on prejudice made “it unnecessary to determine

whether there may be circumstances under which” ad-

——————

5 We have never attempted to delineate the world of “collateral conse­

quences,” see Padilla, 559 U. S., at ___, n. 8 (slip op., at 7, n. 8), nor do

we do so here. But other effects of a conviction commonly viewed as

collateral include civil commitment, civil forfeiture, sex offender regis­

tration, disqualification from public benefits, and disfranchisement.

See id., at ___ (ALITO, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2–3)

(listing other examples).

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 7

Opinion of the Court

vice about a matter deemed collateral violates the Sixth

Amendment. Id., at 60.6

That non-decision left the state and lower federal courts

to deal with the issue; and they almost unanimously con­

cluded that the Sixth Amendment does not require attor­

neys to inform their clients of a conviction’s collateral

consequences, including deportation. All 10 federal appel­

late courts to consider the question decided, in the words

of one, that “counsel’s failure to inform a defendant of the

collateral consequences of a guilty plea is never” a viola­

tion of the Sixth Amendment. Santos-Sanchez v. United

States, 548 F. 3d 327, 334 (CA5 2008).7 That constitutional

guarantee, another typical decision expounded, “assures

an accused of effective assistance of counsel in ‘criminal

prosecutions’ ”; accordingly, advice about matters like de-

portation, which are “not a part of or enmeshed in the

criminal proceeding,” does not fall within the Amend­

ment’s scope. United States v. George, 869 F. 2d 333, 337

(CA7 1989). Appellate courts in almost 30 States agreed.8

——————

6 In saying that much, we declined to rule not only on whether advice

about a conviction’s collateral consequences falls outside the Sixth

Amendment’s scope, but also on whether parole eligibility should be

considered such a consequence, as the court of appeals held.

7 See Broomes v. Ashcroft, 358 F. 3d 1251, 1256 (CA10 2004); United

States v. Fry, 322 F. 3d 1198, 1200–1201 (CA9 2003); United States v.

Gonzalez, 202 F. 3d 20, 25 (CA1 2000); Russo v. United States, 1999 WL

164951, *2 (CA2, Mar. 22, 1999); Ogunbase v. United States, 1991 WL

11619, *1 (CA6, Feb. 5, 1991); United States v. Del Rosario, 902 F. 2d

55, 58–59 (CADC 1990); United States v. George, 869 F. 2d 333, 337

(CA7 1989); United States v. Yearwood, 863 F. 2d 6, 7–8 (CA4 1988);

United States v. Campbell, 778 F. 2d 764, 768–769 (CA11 1985).

8 Rumpel v. State, 847 So. 2d 399, 402–405 (Ala. Crim. App. 2002);

Tafoya v. State, 500 P. 2d 247, 252 (Alaska 1972); State v. Rosas, 183

Ariz. 421, 423, 904 P. 2d 1245, 1247 (App. 1995); Niver v. Commissioner

of Correction, 101 Conn. App. 1, 3–5, 919 A. 2d 1073, 1075–1076 (2007)

(per curiam); State v. Christie, 655 A. 2d 836, 841 (Del. Super. 1994);

Matos v. United States, 631 A. 2d 28, 31–32 (D. C. 1993); Major v. State,

814 So. 2d 424, 431 (Fla. 2002); People v. Huante, 143 Ill. 2d 61, 68–71,

8 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

By contrast, only two state courts held that an attorney

could violate the Sixth Amendment by failing to inform a

client about deportation risks or other collateral conse­

quences of a guilty plea.9 That imbalance led the authors

of the principal scholarly article on the subject to call the

exclusion of advice about collateral consequences from the

Sixth Amendment’s scope one of “the most widely recog­

nized rules of American law.” Chin & Holmes, Effective

Assistance of Counsel and the Consequences of Guilty

Pleas, 87 Cornell L. Rev. 697, 706 (2002).10

——————

571 N. E. 2d 736, 740–741 (1991); State v. Ramirez, 636 N. W. 2d 740,

743–746 (Iowa 2001); State v. Muriithi, 273 Kan. 952, 961, 46 P. 3d

1145, 1152 (2002); Commonwealth v. Fuartado, 170 S. W. 3d 384, 385–

386 (Ky. 2005); State v. Montalban, 2000–2739, p. 4 (La. 2/26/02), 810

So. 2d 1106, 1110; Commonwealth v. Fraire, 55 Mass. App. 916, 917,

774 N. E. 2d 677, 678–679 (2002); People v. Davidovich, 463 Mich. 446,

452, 618 N. W. 2d 579, 582 (2000) (per curiam); State ex rel. Nixon v.

Clark, 926 S. W. 2d 22, 25 (Mo. App. 1996); State v. Zarate, 264 Neb.

690, 693–696, 651 N. W. 2d 215, 221–223 (2002); Barajas v. State, 115

Nev. 440, 441–442, 991 P. 2d 474, 475–476 (1999) (per curiam); State v.

Chung, 210 N. J. Super. 427, 434, 510 A. 2d 72, 76 (App. Div. 1986);

People v. Ford, 86 N. Y. 2d 397, 403–404, 657 N. E. 2d 265, 268–269

(1995); State v. Dalman, 520 N. W. 2d 860, 863–864 (N. D. 1994);

Commonwealth v. Frometa, 520 Pa. 552, 555–557, 555 A. 2d 92, 93–94

(1989); State v. Alejo, 655 A. 2d 692, 692–693 (R. I. 1995); Nikolaev v.

Weber, 2005 S. D. 100, ¶¶11–12, 705 N. W. 2d 72, 75–77 (per curiam);

Bautista v. State, 160 S. W. 3d 917, 922 (Tenn. Crim. App. 2004); Perez

v. State, 31 S. W. 3d 365, 367–368 (Tex. App. 2000); State v. Rojas-

Martinez, 2005 UT 86, ¶¶15–20, 125 P. 3d 930, 934–935; State v.

Martinez-Lazo, 100 Wash. App. 869, 876–878, 999 P. 2d 1275, 1279–

1280 (2000); State v. Santos, 136 Wis. 2d 528, 531, 401 N. W. 2d 856,

858 (App. 1987).

9 People v. Pozo, 746 P. 2d 523, 527–529 (Colo. 1987); State v. Paredez,

2004–NMSC–036, ¶¶17–19, 136 N. M. 533, 539, 101 P. 3d 799, 805.

10 The dissent is therefore wrong to claim that we emphasize “the

absence of lower court authority” holding that an attorney’s failure to

advise about deportation violated the Sixth Amendment. Post, at 10

(opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). We instead point to the presence of lower

court authority—in case after case and jurisdiction after jurisdiction—

holding that such a failure, because relating to a collateral matter,

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 9

Opinion of the Court

So when we decided Padilla, we answered a question

about the Sixth Amendment’s reach that we had left open,

in a way that altered the law of most jurisdictions—and

our reasoning reflected that we were doing as much. In

the normal Strickland case, a court begins by evaluating

the reasonableness of an attorney’s conduct in light of

professional norms, and then assesses prejudice. But as

earlier indicated, see supra, at 5–6, Padilla had a different

starting point. Before asking whether the performance

of Padilla’s attorney was deficient under Strickland, we

considered (in a separately numbered part of the opinion)

whether Strickland applied at all. See 559 U. S., at ___

(slip op., at 7–9). Many courts, we acknowledged, had

excluded advice about collateral matters from the Sixth

Amendment’s ambit; and deportation, because the conse­

quence of a distinct civil proceeding, could well be viewed

as such a matter. See id., at ___ (slip op., at 7). But, we

continued, no decision of our own committed us to “appl[y]

a distinction between direct and collateral consequences to

define the scope” of the right to counsel. Id., at ___ (slip

op., at 8). And however apt that distinction might be in

other contexts, it should not exempt from Sixth Amend­

ment scrutiny a lawyer’s advice (or non-advice) about

a plea’s deportation risk. Deportation, we stated, is

“unique.” Ibid. It is a “particularly severe” penalty, and

one “intimately related to the criminal process”; indeed,

immigration statutes make it “nearly an automatic result”

of some convictions. Ibid. We thus resolved the threshold

question before us by breaching the previously chink-free

wall between direct and collateral consequences: Notwith­

standing the then-dominant view, “Strickland applies to

Padilla’s claim.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9).

If that does not count as “break[ing] new ground” or

“impos[ing] a new obligation,” we are hard pressed to

——————

could not do so.

10 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

know what would. Teague, 489 U. S., at 301. Before

Padilla, we had declined to decide whether the Sixth

Amendment had any relevance to a lawyer’s advice about

matters not part of a criminal proceeding. Perhaps some

advice of that kind would have to meet Strickland’s rea­

sonableness standard—but then again, perhaps not: No

precedent of our own “dictated” the answer. Teague, 489

U. S., at 301. And as the lower courts filled the vacuum,

they almost uniformly insisted on what Padilla called the

“categorica[l] remov[al]” of advice about a conviction’s non­

criminal consequences—including deportation—from the

Sixth Amendment’s scope. 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9).

It was Padilla that first rejected that categorical ap­

proach—and so made the Strickland test operative—when

a criminal lawyer gives (or fails to give) advice about

immigration consequences.11 In acknowledging that fact,

we do not cast doubt on, or at all denigrate, Padilla.

Courts often need to, and do, break new ground; it is the

very premise of Teague that a decision can be right and

also be novel. All we say here is that Padilla’s holding

that the failure to advise about a non-criminal conse­

——————

11 The separate opinions in Padilla objected to just this aspect of the

Court’s ruling. Dissents have been known to exaggerate the novelty

of majority opinions; and “the mere existence of a dissent,” like the

existence of conflicting authority in state or lower federal courts, does

not establish that a rule is new. Beard v. Banks, 542 U. S. 406, 416,

n. 5 (2004); see Williams, 529 U. S., at 410. But the concurring and

dissenting opinions in Padilla were on to something when they de­

scribed the line the Court was crossing. “Until today,” JUSTICE ALITO

wrote, “the longstanding and unanimous position of the federal courts

was that reasonable defense counsel generally need only advise a client

about the direct consequences of a criminal conviction.” See 559 U. S.,

at ___ (concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2). Or again, this time from

JUSTICE SCALIA: “[U]ntil today,” the Sixth Amendment guaranteed only

“legal advice directly related to defense against prosecution” of a

criminal charge. Id., at ___ (dissenting) (slip op., at 2). One need not

agree with any of the separate opinions’ criticisms of Padilla to concur

with their view that it modified governing law.

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 11

Opinion of the Court

quence could violate the Sixth Amendment would not have

been—in fact, was not—“apparent to all reasonable ju­

rists” prior to our decision. Lambrix, 520 U. S., at 527–

528. Padilla thus announced a “new rule.”

III

Chaidez offers, and the dissent largely adopts, a differ­

ent account of Padilla, in which we did no more than

apply Strickland to a new set of facts. On Chaidez’s view,

Strickland insisted “[f]rom its inception” that all aspects of

a criminal lawyer’s performance pass a test of “ ‘reasona­

bleness under prevailing professional norms’ ”: The deci­

sion thus foreclosed any “categorical distinction between

direct and collateral consequences.” Brief for Petitioner

21–22 (emphasis deleted) (quoting Strickland, 466 U. S.,

at 688). Indeed, Chaidez contends, courts prior to Padilla

recognized Strickland’s all-encompassing scope and so

applied its reasonableness standard to advice concerning

deportation. See Brief for Petitioner 25–26; Reply Brief

10–12. She here points to caselaw in three federal appeals

courts allowing ineffective assistance claims when attor­

neys affirmatively misled their clients about the deporta­

tion consequences of guilty pleas.12 The only question left

for Padilla to resolve, Chaidez claims, was whether pro­

fessional norms also require criminal lawyers to volunteer

advice about the risk of deportation. In addressing that

issue, she continues, Padilla did a run-of-the-mill Strick-

land analysis. And more: It did an especially easy Strick-

land analysis. We had earlier noted in INS v. St. Cyr, 533

U. S. 289 (2001)—a case raising an issue of immigration

law unrelated to the Sixth Amendment—that a “compe­

tent defense counsel” would inform his client about a

guilty plea’s deportation consequences. Id., at 323, n. 50.

——————

12 See United States v. Kwan, 407 F. 3d 1005, 1015–1017 (CA9 2005);

United States v. Couto, 311 F. 3d 179, 188 (CA2 2002); Downs-Morgan

v. United States, 765 F. 2d 1534, 1540–1541 (CA11 1985).

12 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

All Padilla had to do, Chaidez concludes, was recite that

prior finding.

But Chaidez’s (and the dissent’s) story line is wrong, for

reasons we have mostly already noted: Padilla had to

develop new law, establishing that the Sixth Amendment

applied at all, before it could assess the performance of

Padilla’s lawyer under Strickland. See supra, at 5–6, 9.

Our first order of business was thus to consider whether

the widely accepted distinction between direct and collat­

eral consequences categorically foreclosed Padilla’s claim,

whatever the level of his attorney’s performance. We did

not think, as Chaidez argues, that Strickland barred

resort to that distinction. Far from it: Even in Padilla we

did not eschew the direct-collateral divide across the

board. See 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8) (“Whether that

distinction is [generally] appropriate is a question we need

not consider in this case”). Rather, we relied on the spe­

cial “nature of deportation”—the severity of the penalty

and the “automatic” way it follows from conviction—to

show that “[t]he collateral versus direct distinction [was]

ill-suited” to dispose of Padilla’s claim. Id., at ___ (slip op.,

at 8–9). All that reasoning came before we conducted a

Strickland analysis (by examining professional norms and

so forth), and none of it followed ineluctably from prior

law.13

——————

13 The dissent’s entire analysis founders on this most basic point. In

its lengthy description of Padilla, the dissent picks up in the middle—

after the Court concluded that the direct-collateral distinction did not

preclude finding that Padilla’s lawyer provided ineffective assistance

under the Sixth Amendment. See post, at 3–5. The dissent justifies

ignoring that threshold conclusion on the ground that “Padilla declined

to embrace the . . . distinction between collateral and direct conse­

quences” and “stated very clearly that it found the distinction irrele­

vant” to the case. Post, at 6. But it is exactly in refusing to apply the

direct-collateral distinction that the Padilla Court did something novel.

Before then, as the Court forthrightly acknowledged, that distinction

would have doomed Padilla’s claim in well-nigh every court in the

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 13

Opinion of the Court

Predictably, then, the caselaw Chaidez and the dissent

cite fails to support their claim that lower courts “accepted

that Strickland applied to deportation advice.” Brief for

Petitioner 25; see post, at 8–11. True enough, three fed-

eral circuits (and a handful of state courts) held before Pa-

dilla that misstatements about deportation could support

an ineffective assistance claim. But those decisions rea­

soned only that a lawyer may not affirmatively misrepre­

sent his expertise or otherwise actively mislead his client

on any important matter, however related to a criminal

prosecution. See, e.g., United States v. Kwan, 407 F. 3d

1005, 1015–1017 (CA9 2005). They co-existed happily

with precedent, from the same jurisdictions (and almost

all others), holding that deportation is not “so unique as to

warrant an exception to the general rule that a defendant

need not be advised of the [collateral] consequences of a

guilty plea.” United States v. Campbell, 778 F. 2d 764,

769 (CA11 1985).14 So at most, Chaidez has shown that a

minority of courts recognized a separate rule for material

misrepresentations, regardless whether they concerned

deportation or another collateral matter. That limited

rule does not apply to Chaidez’s case. And because it lived

in harmony with the exclusion of claims like hers from the

Sixth Amendment, it does not establish what she needs

to—that all reasonable judges, prior to Padilla, thought

they were living in a Padilla-like world.

Nor, finally, does St. Cyr have any relevance here. That

——————

United States. See 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7); supra, at 9.

14 See also Resendiz v. Kovensky, 416 F. 3d 952, 957 (CA9 2005)

(“[B]ecause immigration consequences remain collateral, the failure of

counsel to advise his client of the potential immigration consequences

of a conviction does not violate the Sixth Amendment”); Russo v. United

States, 1999 WL 164951, *2 (“[C]ounsel cannot be found ineffective for

the mere failure to inform a defendant of the collateral consequences of

a plea, such as deportation”) (relying on United States v. Santelises, 509

F. 2d 703, 704 (CA2 1975) (per curiam)).

14 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

decision stated what is common sense (and what we again

recognized in Padilla): A reasonably competent lawyer will

tell a non-citizen client about a guilty plea’s deportation

consequences because “ ‘[p]reserving the client’s right to

remain in the United States may be more important to the

client than any potential jail sentence.’ ” Padilla, 559

U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10) (quoting St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at

322). But in saying that much, St. Cyr did not determine

that the Sixth Amendment requires a lawyer to provide

such information. Courts had held to the contrary not

because advice about deportation was insignificant to a

client—really, who could think that, whether before or

after St. Cyr?—but because it concerned a matter collat­

eral to the criminal prosecution.15 On those courts’ view,

the Sixth Amendment no more demanded competent

advice about a plea’s deportation consequences than it

demanded competent representation in the deportation

process itself. Padilla decided that view was wrong. But

to repeat: It was Padilla that did so. In the years follow­

ing St. Cyr, not a single state or lower federal court con­

sidering a lawyer’s failure to provide deportation advice

——————

15 The dissent claims the opposite, averring that lower court “deci­

sions show nothing more than that the underlying professional norms

had not yet evolved to require attorneys to provide advice about depor­

tation consequences.” Post, at 8. But the dissent cannot point to a

single decision stating that a lawyer’s failure to offer advice about

deportation met professional norms; all the decisions instead held that

a lawyer’s breach of those norms was constitutionally irrelevant be­

cause deportation was a collateral consequence. See supra, at 7. Had

courts in fact considered professional standards in the slew of cases

before Padilla that presented Padilla-like claims, they would have

discovered as early as 1968 that the American Bar Association in­

structed criminal lawyers to advise their non-citizen clients about the

risks of deportation. See 3 ABA Project on Standards for Criminal

Justice, Standards Relating to Pleas of Guilty §3.2(b), Commentary,

p. 71 (App. Draft 1968). The difficulty in upholding such claims prior to

Padilla had nothing to do with courts’ view of professional norms and

everything to do with their use of the direct-collateral divide.

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 15

Opinion of the Court

abandoned the distinction between direct and collateral

consequences, and several courts reaffirmed that divide.

See, e.g., Santos-Sanchez, 548 F. 3d, at 335–336; Broomes

v. Ashcroft, 358 F. 3d 1251, 1256–1257 (CA10 2004);

United States v. Fry, 322 F. 3d 1198, 1200–1201 (CA9 2003).

It took Padilla to decide that in assessing such a lawyer’s

performance, the Sixth Amendment sets the standard.16

IV

This Court announced a new rule in Padilla. Under

Teague, defendants whose convictions became final prior

to Padilla therefore cannot benefit from its holding. We

accordingly affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals

for the Seventh Circuit.

It is so ordered.

——————

16 Chaidez makes two back-up arguments in her merits briefs—that

Teague’s bar on retroactivity does not apply when a petitioner chal­

lenges a federal conviction, or at least does not do so when she makes a

claim of ineffective assistance. Brief for Petitioner 27–39. But Chaidez

did not include those issues in her petition for certiorari. Nor, still

more critically, did she adequately raise them in the lower courts. Only

her petition for rehearing en banc in the Seventh Circuit at all ques­

tioned Teague’s applicability, and her argument there—that a “Teague­

light” standard should apply to challenges to federal convictions—

differs from the ones she has made in this Court. See Petition for

Rehearing and for Rehearing En Banc in No. 10–3623 (CA7), p. 13.

Moreover, we cannot find any case in which a federal court has consid­

ered Chaidez’s contention that Teague should not apply to ineffective

assistance claims. “[M]indful that we are a court of review, not of first

view,” we decline to rule on Chaidez’s new arguments. Cutter v. Wil-

kinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005).

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 1

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 11–820

_________________

ROSELVA CHAIDEZ, PETITIONER v. UNITED STATES

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

[February 20, 2013]

JUSTICE THOMAS, concurring in the judgment.

In Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. 356 (2010), this Court

held that the Sixth Amendment requires an attorney for

a criminal defendant to apprise his client of the risk of

deportation created by a guilty plea. I dissented. The

Sixth Amendment provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecu-

tions,” an accused enjoys the right “to have the Assistance

of Counsel for his defence.” By its terms, this right ex-

tends “to legal advice directly related to defense against

prosecution of the charged offense,” and “[t]here is no

basis in text or in principle” to expand the reach of this

guarantee to guidance concerning the collateral conse-

quences of a guilty plea. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2–3)

(SCALIA, J., dissenting). Today, the Court finds that Pa-

dilla announced a new rule of constitutional law and that,

under our decision in Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288

(1989), “defendants whose convictions became final prior to

Padilla therefore cannot benefit from its holding.” Ante, at

15. I continue to believe that Padilla was wrongly decided

and that the Sixth Amendment does not extend—either

prospectively or retrospectively—to advice concerning the

collateral consequences arising from a guilty plea. I, there-

fore, believe that the Teague analysis is unnecessary and

thus concur only in the judgment.

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 1

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 11–820

_________________

ROSELVA CHAIDEZ, PETITIONER v. UNITED STATES

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

[February 20, 2013]

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG

joins, dissenting.

The Court holds today that Padilla v. Kentucky, 559

U. S. ___ (2010), announced a “new” rule within the mean­

ing of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 301 (1989), and so

does not apply to convictions that became final before its

announcement. That is wrong, because Padilla did noth­

ing more than apply the existing rule of Strickland v.

Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984), in a new setting, the

same way the Court has done repeatedly in the past: by

surveying the relevant professional norms and conclud-

ing that they unequivocally required attorneys to provide

advice about the immigration consequences of a guilty

plea. Because Padilla fell squarely within the metes and

bounds established by Strickland, I respectfully dissent.

I

A

The majority correctly sets forth the governing legal

principles under Teague and Strickland. Ante, at 4–5.

The Teague inquiry turns centrally on the “nature of the

rule” in question, and for that reason, “[w]here the begin­

ning point is a rule of . . . general application, . . . it will be

the infrequent case that yields a result so novel that it

forges a new rule.” Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277, 308–309

(1992) (KENNEDY, J., concurring in judgment); see ante, at

2 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

4–5. The majority makes the important observation that

“when all we do is apply a general standard to the kind

of factual circumstances it was meant to address, we will

rarely state a new rule.” Ibid. It makes sense, then, that

“garden-variety applications of . . . Strickland . . . do not

produce new rules.” Ante, at 5.

In Strickland, we did not provide a comprehensive def-

inition of deficient performance, and instead held that

“[t]he proper measure of attorney performance remains

simply reasonableness under prevailing professional

norms.” 466 U. S., at 688. Strickland’s reasonableness

prong therefore takes its content from the standards by

which lawyers judge their professional obligations, ibid.,

and those standards are subject to change. That is why,

despite the many different settings in which it has been

applied, we have never found that an application of Strick-

land resulted in a new rule.1

Significantly, we have previously found that applica­

tions of Strickland to new factual scenarios are not barred

under 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1) of the Antiterrorism and

Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). Section 2254(d)(1)

precludes habeas relief unless a state court decision vio­

lates “clearly established Federal law,” which, as relevant

here, largely overlaps with the inquiry under Teague of

whether a decision was “dictated by precedent.” 489 U. S.,

——————

1 See,

e.g., Lafler v. Cooper, 566 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2012) (incorrect

advice leading to a plea offer’s rejection); Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U. S.

374 (2005) (failure to investigate evidence the prosecution intended to

use to prove an aggravating circumstance in a capital case); Wiggins v.

Smith, 539 U. S. 510 (2003) (failure to investigate a defendant’s social

history in a capital case); Roe v. Flores-Ortega, 528 U. S. 470 (2000)

(failure to consult with a defendant regarding whether to pursue an

appeal); Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 391 (2000) (failure to inves­

tigate a defendant’s background for the purposes of mitigation evidence

in a capital case); Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U. S. 52 (1985) (failure to pro-

vide effective assistance during plea negotiations).

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 3

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

at 301 (plurality opinion).2 In Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U. S.

510, 522 (2003), for example, we found that Williams v.

Taylor, 529 U. S. 362 (2000), “made no new law” when it

held that Strickland extended to an attorney’s responsibil­

ity to conduct a background investigation in a capital case.

Rather, we explained that “in referring to the ABA Stand­

ards for Criminal Justice as guides, [Williams] applied

the same ‘clearly established’ precedent of Strickland we

apply today.” 539 U. S., at 522. Similarly, in Lafler v.

Cooper, 566 U. S. ___, ___, ___–___ (2012) (slip op., at 6,

14–16), we rejected the argument advanced by the Solici­

tor General that the Sixth Amendment did not extend to

advice about a plea offer because it did not impact the

fairness of the trial. Instead, we simply held that Strick-

land applied to this form of attorney misconduct.

In short, where we merely apply Strickland in a way

that corresponds to an evolution in professional norms, we

make no new law.

B

Contrary to the majority’s reconstruction, Padilla is

built squarely on the foundation laid out by Strickland.

Padilla relied upon controlling precedent. It began by

reciting the basic rule that “[u]nder Strickland, we first

determine whether counsel’s representation ‘fell below an

objective standard of reasonableness.’ ” Padilla, 559 U. S.,

at ___ (slip op., at 9) (quoting Strickland, 466 U. S., at

688). We recognized that “[t]he first prong—constitutional

deficiency—is necessarily linked to the practice and expec­

tations of the legal community: ‘[t]he proper measure of

——————

2 AEDPA of course differs from the Teague rule in other important

respects. See, e.g., Greene v. Fisher, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op.,

at 5). But these differences aside, the fact that we have repeatedly

found AEDPA cases involving Strickland to be controlled by established

precedent underscores that the application of Strickland in a new

context should almost never result in a new rule.

4 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

attorney performance remains reasonableness under pre-

vailing professional norms.’ ” Padilla, 559 U. S., at ___ (slip

op., at 9) (quoting Strickland, 466 U. S., at 688).

We therefore examined the substantial changes in fed-

eral immigration law that provided the backdrop to the

relevant professional standards. Padilla, 559 U. S., at ___

(slip op., at 2–6). Pursuant to the Immigration Act of

1917, 39 Stat. 889–890, a judge could recommend that a

defendant who had committed a deportable offense not

be removed from the country. Congress entirely eliminated

this procedure in 1990. 104 Stat. 5050. Then the Illegal

Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of

1996 (IIRIRA), 110 Stat. 3009–596, abolished the Attor-

ney General’s authority to grant discretionary relief from

removal for all but a small number of offenses. Padilla,

559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6). These changes in immi­

gration law meant that for a noncitizen who committed

a removable offense, “removal [had become] practically

inevitable.” Ibid.

In parallel with these developments, the standards of

professional responsibility relating to immigration had

become more demanding. “For at least the past 15 years,”

we observed in Padilla, “professional norms have gener-

ally imposed an obligation on counsel to provide advice on

the deportation consequences of a client’s plea.” Id., at ___

(slip op., at 15). Citing an array of practice guides and

professional responsibility manuals, we noted that “[t]he

weight of prevailing professional norms supports the view

that counsel must advise her client regarding the risk of

deportation.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9). Indeed, “authori­

ties of every stripe—including the American Bar Associa­

tion, criminal defense and public defender organizations,

authoritative treatises, and state and city bar publica­

tions—universally require defense attorneys to advise as

to the risk of deportation consequences for non-citizen

clients.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10) (internal quotation

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 5

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

marks omitted).

We drew further support for our conclusion that profes­

sional standards required advice about deportation conse­

quences from our decision in INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U. S. 289

(2001). See Padilla, 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10–11)

(citing St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 323). In St. Cyr, we had

explained that the availability of discretionary relief from

removal was critical to a noncitizen’s decision to accept a

plea offer, and expected counsel to follow the instructions

of “numerous practice guides,” such as the ABA’s Stand­

ards for Criminal Justice, to inform themselves of the

possible immigration consequences of a plea. Padilla, 559

U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11) (citing St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at

323, n. 50); see id., at 322, n. 48. And we there found that

many States already required that a trial judge advise

defendants of the same. Ibid. St. Cyr thus “recognized

that ‘preserving the client’s right to remain in the United

States may be more important to the client than any

potential jail sentence.’ ” Padilla, 559 U. S., at ___ (slip

op., at 10) (quoting St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 322).

Our application of Strickland in Padilla followed natu­

rally from these earlier observations about changes in

immigration law and the accompanying evolution of pro­

fessional norms. When we decided St. Cyr and Padilla,

nothing about Strickland’s substance or applicability had

changed. The only difference from prior law was that

the underlying professional norms had changed such that

counsel’s failure to give this advice now amounted to

constitutionally deficient performance.3 Both before Pa-

——————

3 Even before IIRIRA and St. Cyr, lawyers of course understood that

it was good practice to inform clients of the deportation consequences of

a plea. See ante, at 14, n. 15 (citing 3 ABA Project on Standards for

Criminal Justice, Standards Relating to Pleas of Guilty §3.2(b), Com­

mentary, p. 71 (App. Draft 1968)). Following the sea change in immi­

gration law, however, the professional norms had become so established

and universally recognized that the measure of constitutionally ade­

6 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

dilla and after, counsel was obligated to follow the rele­

vant professional norms. It was only because those norms

reflected changes in immigration law that Padilla reached

the result it did, not because the Sixth Amendment right

had changed at all.

II

A

Accepting that routine applications of Strickland do not

result in new rules, the majority nevertheless holds that

Padilla went a step further. In its view, Padilla “ ‘br[oke]

new ground’ ” by addressing the threshold question of

whether advice about deportation is a collateral conse­

quence of a criminal conviction that falls within the scope

of the Sixth Amendment. Ante, at 9–10. But that is

wrong, because Padilla declined to embrace the very

distinction between collateral and direct consequences of a

criminal conviction that the majority says it did. In fact,

the Court stated very clearly that it found the distinction

irrelevant for the purposes of determining a defense law­

yer’s obligation to provide advice about the immigration

consequences of a plea. 559 U. S., at ___, n. 8 (slip op.,

at 7, n. 8). We asserted that we had “never applied a dis­

tinction between direct and collateral consequences to

define the scope of constitutionally ‘reasonable professional

assistance’ required under Strickland,” and concluded that

“[w]hether that distinction is appropriate is a question we

need not consider in this case.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8)

(emphasis added). The distinction was “ill suited” to the

task at hand, we explained, because deportation has a

“close connection to the criminal process,” and is “uniquely

difficult to classify as either a direct or a collateral conse­

quence.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8–9). Indeed, “[o]ur law

——————

quate performance now included giving such advice in the form Padilla

recognized. See 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10).

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 7

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

ha[d] enmeshed criminal convictions and the penalty of de-

portation for nearly a century,” and we had “long recog­

nized” that deportation is “particularly severe.” Id., at ___

(slip op., at 8).4

At bottom, then, the majority’s argument hinges upon a

distinction the Court has never embraced and that Padilla

found irrelevant to the issue it ultimately decided. With­

out this revision to our recent decisional history, the ma­

jority’s analysis unravels.

B

The majority finds that the “legal landscape,” Graham v.

Collins, 506 U. S. 461, 468 (1993), before Padilla was

nearly uniform in its rejection of Strickland’s application

to the deportation consequences of a plea. Ante, at 7–10.

It concludes that the lower courts were generally in

agreement that the Sixth Amendment did not require

attorneys to inform clients of the collateral consequences

of a plea, and that this weighs heavily in favor of finding

that Padilla announced a new rule. Ante, at 7–8, nn. 7, 8.

But the majority’s discussion of these precedents operates

at too high a level of generality and fails to account for the

——————

4 See, e.g., INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U. S. 289, 322 (2001) (noting that

“[p]reserving the client’s right to remain in the United States may be

more important . . . than any potential jail sentence” (internal quota­

tion marks omitted)); Jordan v. De George, 341 U. S. 223, 243 (1951)

(Jackson, J., dissenting) (deportation proceedings “practically . . . are

[criminal] for they extend the criminal process of sentencing to include

on the same convictions an additional punishment”); Fong Haw Tan v.

Phelan, 333 U. S. 6, 10 (1948) (“[D]eportation is a drastic measure and

at times the equivalent of banishment or exile”); Ng Fung Ho v. White,

259 U. S. 276, 284 (1922) (deportation may result in “loss of both

property and life; or of all that makes life worth living”); Fong Yue Ting

v. United States, 149 U. S. 698, 740 (1893) (Brewer, J., dissenting)

(“Every one knows that to be forcibly taken away from home, and

family, and friends, and business, and property, and sent across the

ocean to a distant land, is punishment; and that oftentimes most severe

and cruel”).

8 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

development of professional standards over time. St. Cyr

noted the importance of advising clients about immigra­

tion consequences was of recent vintage, indeed more re-

cent than some of the cases the majority cites. See 533

U. S., at 322–323. The Court relies upon decisions issued

over a period that spans more than 30 years. See ante, at

7–8, nn. 7, 8. Nearly half of them (17) were decided before

the enactment of IIRIRA. See ibid. And all but two of

the Federal Court of Appeals cases were decided before St.

Cyr. See ante, at 7–8, nn. 7, 8. These earlier decisions

show nothing more than that the underlying professional

norms had not yet evolved to require attorneys to provide

advice about deportation consequences.

Cases from the period following IIRIRA and St. Cyr

undermine the majority’s generalizations about the state

of the law before Padilla. Deportation had long been un-

derstood by lower courts to present “the most difficult”

penalty to classify as either a collateral or direct conse­

quence. United States v. Russell, 686 F. 2d 35, 38 (CADC

1982); cf. Janvier v. United States, 793 F. 2d 449, 455

(CA2 1986) (holding that Strickland applied to advice

about a judicial recommendation against deportation).

Eventually, and in parallel with changes in federal immi­

gration law and the corresponding professional norms, the

lower courts had acknowledged an important qualification

to the collateral consequences rule. After the passage of

IIRIRA and this Court’s decision in St. Cyr, many courts

concluded that a lawyer’s affirmative misstatements about

the immigration consequences of a guilty plea can consti­

tute deficient performance under Strickland. Indeed, each

Federal Court of Appeals to address the question after St.

Cyr so held. See United States v. Couto, 311 F. 3d 179,

188 (CA2 2002); United States v. Kwan, 407 F. 3d 1005,

1015 (CA9 2005); cf. Downs-Morgan v. United States, 765

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 9

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

F. 2d 1534, 1540–1541 (CA11 1985).5 State-court deci­

sions from this period were in accord and relied upon

similar reasoning.6

These decisions created an important exception to the

collateral/direct consequences distinction. They also fore­

shadowed the Court’s reasoning in Padilla by basing their

analysis of the relevant professional norms on the special

nature of deportation, the ABA standards governing im­

migration practice, and the Court’s assessment of those

standards in St Cyr. See Kwan, 407 F. 3d, at 1016 (“That

counsel may have misled [the defendant] out of ignorance

is no excuse. It is a basic rule of professional conduct that

a lawyer must . . . [remain] abreast of changes in the

law and its practice. . . . Counsel’s performance . . . fell be-

low the [ABA]’s ethical standard for criminal defense at-

torneys with respect to immigration consequences. The

Supreme Court noted this standard in [St. Cyr]”); Couto,

311 F. 3d, at 187–191 (citing St. Cyr and the relevant ABA

standards, and concluding that “recent Supreme Court

authority supports [a] broader view of attorney responsi­

bility” that encompasses affirmative misrepresentations

——————

5 See United States v. Mora-Gomez, 875 F. Supp. 1208, 1212 (ED Va.

1995) (“[T]he clear consensus is that an affirmative misstatement

regarding deportation may constitute ineffective assistance”).

6 See Rubio v. State, 124 Nev. 1032, 1041, 194 P. 3d 1224, 1230 (2008)

(per curiam) (“Like other jurisdictions, we recognize the particularly

harsh and penal nature of deportation. The Supreme Court of the

United States has described deportation as ‘a drastic measure and at

times the equivalent of banishment or exile’ and further depicted it as

‘a penalty.’ . . . Perhaps understanding the harshness of deportation, a

growing number of jurisdictions have adopted the affirmative misrepre­

sentation exception to the collateral consequence rule”); People v.

Correa, 108 Ill. 2d 541, 550–552, 485 N. E. 2d 307, 311 (1985); People v.

McDonald, 1 N. Y. 3d 109, 113–115, 802 N. E. 2d 131, 134–135 (2003);

see also Alguno v. State, 892 So. 2d 1200, 1201 (Fla. App. 2005)

(per curiam); State v. Rojas-Martinez, 2005 UT 86 ¶¶ 15–20, 125 P. 3d

930, 933–935; In re Yim, 139 Wash. 2d 581, 588, 989 P. 2d 512, 516

(1999).

10 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

about deportation consequences); see also Downs-Morgan,

765 F. 2d, at 1541 (“[D]eportation and exclusion [are]

harsh consequences”).

The majority believes that these decisions did not mean­

ingfully alter the state of the law in the lower courts be­

fore Padilla, because they merely applied the age-old

principle that a lawyer may not affirmatively mislead a

client. Ante, at 12–13. But, as explained, the reasoning of

these cases renders that characterization at best incom­

plete. See, e.g., Kwan, 407 F. 3d, at 1016. While these

lower court precedents are consistent with the general

principle that attorneys should not mislead clients by

providing incorrect advice, they did not rest primarily on

that rule. Rather, they recognized the significant changes

in professional norms that predated Padilla and that we

had noted in St. Cyr. As a consequence, the “wall between

direct and collateral consequences” that the lower courts

had erected, ante, at 9, had already been dealt a serious

blow by the time the Court decided Padilla.

As the majority points out, these misrepresentation

cases stopped short of imposing an affirmative obligation

on lawyers to consult with clients about the consequences

of deportation. Ante, at 12–13. But the majority places

too much emphasis on the absence of lower court authority

finding that an attorney’s omissions with respect to depor­

tation resulted in ineffective assistance. The distinction

between omissions and affirmative misrepresentations on

which these lower court cases depended cannot be recon­

ciled with Strickland. In Padilla itself, we rejected the

Solicitor General’s suggestion that Strickland should

apply to advice about the immigration consequences of a

plea only in cases where defense counsel makes an affirm­

ative misstatement. Padilla, 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at

12). We did so because we found that Strickland was

incompatible with the distinction between an obligation to

give advice and a prohibition on affirmative misstate­

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 11

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

ments. 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 12–13) (citing Strick-

land, 466 U. S., at 690). Strickland made clear that its

standard of attorney performance applied to both “acts”

and “omissions,” and that a rule limiting the performance

inquiry to one or the other was too narrow. 466 U. S.,

at 690. Thus, the distinction between misrepresentations

and omissions, on which the majority relies in classifying

lower court precedent, implies a categorical rule that is

inconsistent with Strickland’s requirement of a case-by­

case assessment of an attorney’s performance.7 Id., at

688–689; see, e.g., Roe v. Flores-Ortega, 528 U. S. 470, 479

(2000). In short, that some courts have differentiated

between misleading by silence and affirmative misrep-

resentation hardly establishes the rationality of the dis­

tinction. Notably, the Court offers no reasoned basis for

believing that such a distinction can be extracted from

Strickland.

To be sure, lower courts did continue to apply the dis­

tinction between collateral and direct consequences after

St. Cyr. See ante, at 13–14; see, e.g., Broomes v. Ashcroft,

358 F. 3d 1251, 1256–1257 (CA10 2004). Even so, and

even assuming the misrepresentation cases did not call

the distinction into question, the existence of these lower

court decisions is not dispositive. “[T]he standard for

determining when a case establishes a new rule is ‘objec­

tive,’ and the mere existence of conflicting authority does

——————

7 The majority cites a law review article for the proposition that the

categorical consequences rule is “one of ‘the most widely recognized

rules of American law.’ ” Ante, at 8 (quoting Chin & Holmes, Effective

Assistance of Counsel and the Consequences of Guilty Pleas, 87 Cornell

L. Rev. 697, 706 (2002)). But the article was, in fact, quite critical of

the rule. The authors explained that “[t]he real work of the conviction

is performed by the collateral consequences,” and that the direct/

collateral distinction in the context of ineffective-assistance claims

was “surprising because it seems inconsistent with the framework that

the Supreme Court . . . laid out” in Strickland. Chin & Holmes, at

700–701.

12 CHAIDEZ v. UNITED STATES

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

not necessarily mean a rule is new.” Wright, 505 U. S., at

304 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (citing Stringer

v. Black, 503 U. S. 222, 237 (1992)); see Graham v. Col-

lins, 506 U. S. 461, 506 (1993) (Souter, J., dissenting).

Where the application of Strickland was straightfor­

ward, rooted in 15 years of professional standards and the

Court’s prior St. Cyr decision, there is no reason to put

these lower court cases, many from more than a decade

earlier, ahead of this Court’s simple and clear reasoning in

Padilla. Nevertheless, the majority reaches the paradoxi­

cal conclusion that by declining to apply a collateral­

consequence doctrine the Court had never adopted, Pa-

dilla announced a new rule.

III

What truly appears to drive the majority’s analysis is its

sense that Padilla occasioned a serious disruption in lower

court decisional reasoning. See, e.g., ante, at 9–10 (“If that

does not count as ‘break[ing] new ground’ . . . we are hard

pressed to know what would” (quoting Teague, 489 U. S.,

at 301)). The concurring and dissenting opinions in Pa-

dilla similarly reflected the impression that it was a sig­

nificant and destabilizing decision. See 559 U. S., at ___

(ALITO, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 3); id., at

___ (SCALIA, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 5) (describing the

majority opinion as a “sledge hammer”); ante, at 8–9, n.

10. But the fact that a decision was perceived as momen­

tous or consequential, particularly by those who disagreed

with it, does not control in the Teague analysis. Faithfully

applying the Teague rule depends instead on an examina­

tion of this Court’s reasoning and an objective assessment

of the precedent at issue. Stringer, 503 U. S., at 237. In

Padilla, we did nothing more than apply Strickland. By

holding to the contrary, today’s decision deprives defend­

ants of the fundamental protection of Strickland, which

requires that lawyers comply with professional norms

Cite as: 568 U. S. ____ (2013) 13

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

with respect to any advice they provide to clients.

* * *

Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment of the Sev­

enth Circuit and hold that Padilla applies retroactively on

collateral review to convictions that became final before its

announcement. With respect, I dissent.