The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6–3 decision, reversed the Fifth Circuit and held that a death-row prisoner’s broad constitutional challenge to Texas’s postconviction DNA-testing statute, Article 64, could satisfy Article III standing and redressability requirements.

The ruling matters because it allows prisoners to bring federal claims seeking DNA testing under a theory that invalidating Article 64 as applied would remove a statutory bar that otherwise would prevent testing — even if a prosecutor might, later in the process, offer a different reason to deny access to evidence.

Gutierrez was convicted and sentenced to death for the killing of a woman during a robbery. He sought DNA testing the defendant said would show he was not in the home. Texas law, as applied by state courts, limited Article 64 relief to tests that would prove innocence of the underlying offense rather than tests that might only affect the sentence. Gutierrez filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim asking a federal court for declaratory relief that the state procedure denied due process by precluding testing that could affect punishment. The district court sided with Gutierrez; the Fifth Circuit reversed on standing and other grounds.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the majority opinion, joined by the chief justice and Justices Kagan, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Jackson. The majority said lower courts erred by focusing on the particular declaratory judgment entered and by treating redressability as a mere probabilistic prediction that a favorable decision would inevitably induce a prosecutor to turn over evidence. As the opinion explained, a successful constitutional challenge that eliminates Article 64 as a reason for denying testing would itself redress the plaintiff’s injury.

Evan Lee, emeritus professor at UC Law, San Francisco, summarized the majority’s objection to the Fifth Circuit’s approach, saying the court “treated the redressability analysis as a straight probabilistic exercise” — a characterization the Supreme Court said mirrored errors corrected in a prior case the majority relied on.

Justice Barrett declined to join a part of the opinion that cited two administrative-law standing cases — FEC v. Akins and Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife — warning that invoking those precedents in the unique context of DNA-evidence requests might “muddy the waters” of standing doctrine. Separate dissents by Justices Thomas and Alito, with Justice Gorsuch joining Alito’s opinion, argued that federal courts should not be involved in enforcing postconviction procedures and that the majority misapplied the governing standard established in the earlier Reed decision.

Speakers on the Federal Judicial Center podcast emphasized the ruling’s practical effect for lower courts. Laurie Levinson, professor of law, said courts should treat postconviction processes such as DNA testing consistently with their stated purposes: “If there are postconviction processes, particularly things like DNA, they can’t be unfairly limited, and…you should use them if you say that you will.”

For lower courts and litigants, the decision reaffirms that a challenge aimed at invalidating a statutory reason for denying evidence can satisfy redressability even where later prosecutorial decisions remain possible. The ruling also underscores that prior Supreme Court decisions on standing — including the recent Reed decision referenced by the majority — remain controlling for lower courts considering similar claims.