Whether a state court's express refusal to consider a petitioner's constitutional claim constitutes an adjudication on the merits under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In 2015, Mr. Patsalis was sentenced to a total of 292 years in prison after a jury convicted him of 25 counts stemming from a string of burglaries in which the total value of the items taken was just over $5,400. On direct appeal, Mr. Patsalis argued that the total sentence violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The Arizona Court of Appeals refused to adjudicate this claim, relying on Arizona’s general rule that state courts “will not consider the imposition of consecutive sentences in a proportionality inquiry.” State v. Berger, 134 P.3d 378, 384 (Ariz. 2006). Mr. Patsalis filed a federal habeas petition, and again pressed his Eighth Amendment challenge. The district court denied the petition, and the court of appeals affirmed. The court of appeals first held that the state court had adjudicated Mr. Patsalis’s claim on the merits, despite the Arizona Court of Appeals’s express reliance on Arizona’s general rule. It then held that the state-court decision was not an unreasonable application of clearly established law. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). This case presents the following questions: 1. When a state court expressly refuses to consider a petitioner’s constitutional claim, has that court nevertheless adjudicated that claim “on the merits” for purposes of § 2254(d)? 2. Has this Court clearly established, through over a century of Eighth Amendment proportionality cases, that “challenges to the length of term-of-years sentences given all the circumstances in a particular case,” Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 59 (2010), extend to the aggregate length of multiple sentences?