Page:Jones v. Hendrix.pdf/28

Rh not lie for errors of state law.’ ” Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S. 62, 67 (1991) (quoting Lewis v. Jeffers, 497 U. S. 764, 780 (1990)). As a result, it is unclear what work the Government’s state-prisoner-habeas benchmark is even doing in its answer to the question presented here.

Rather, the narrow base on which the Government’s top-heavy theory ultimately turns out to rest is its assertion that §2255(h) is simply not clear enough to support the inference that Congress entirely closed the door on pure statutory claims not brought in a federal prisoner’s initial §2255 motion. See Brief for Respondent 28–29, 39. That assertion is unpersuasive for the reasons we have already explained: §2255(h) specifies the two circumstances in which a second or successive collateral attack on a federal sentence is available, and those circumstances do not include an intervening change in statutory interpretation.

The Government asserts that we require “the clearest command” before construing AEDPA to “close [the] courthouse doors” on “a strong equitable claim” for relief. Holland v. Florida, 560 U. S. 631, 646, 649 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). The only two cases the Government relies on for its clear-statement rule do not sweep as broadly as it suggests. In Holland, we applied the general presumption of equitable tolling to AEDPA’s 1-year statute of limitations for state prisoners’ habeas claims. Id., at 645–649. Afterward, in McQuiggin v. Perkins, 569 U. S. 383 (2013), we held that “a convincing showing of actual innocence” could enable a prisoner to evade AEDPA’s statute of limitations entirely. Id., at 386.

Undoubtedly, McQuiggin’s assertion of equitable authority to override clear statutory text was a bold one. But even taking Holland and McQuiggin for all they are worth, there is a significant difference between reading equitable exceptions into a statute of limitations, on the one hand, and demanding a clear statement before foreclosing workarounds to AEDPA’s second-or-successive restrictions, on the other.