Fay v. Noia

Fay v. Noia,, was a 1963 United States Supreme Court case concerning habeas corpus. In a majority opinion authored by Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., the Court held that state prisoners were entitled to access to habeas relief in federal court, even if they did not pursue a remedy in state court that was not available to them at the time. Furthermore, the majority in Fay set out the "deliberate bypass" standard, whereby federal habeas courts could not deny petitions brought by state prisoners unless that prisoner had "deliberately bypassed the orderly procedure of state courts" for the adjudication of constitutional claims.

Fay is recognized as one of three highly influential 1963 cases in a "trilogy" of Supreme Court habeas jurisprudence, the other two being Townsend v. Sain and Sanders v. United States. The Court's decision in Fay overturned its prior decision in the 1950 case Darr v. Burford "to the extent that it required a state prisoner to seek certiorari in this Court before seeking federal habeas corpus relief." The Supreme Court later partially overruled Fay in its 1977 decision in Wainwright v. Sykes, and fully overruled Fay in its 1991 decision in Coleman v. Thompson.