Question not identified.

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Procedural default is a “defense that the State is obligated to raise and preserve if it is not to lose the right to assert the defense thereafter.” Trest v. Cain, 522 U.S. 87, 89 (1997). And this Court has made clear, federal courts have “the authority to resurrect only forfeited defenses’—not waived ones. Wood v. Milyard, 566 U.S. 463, 471 n.5 (2012). In Wood, this Court clarified that a state responding to a petition for habeas corpus has waived an affirmative defense when, “after expressing its clear and accurate understanding of the [defense],” it “deliberately steer[s] the District Court away from the question and toward the merits.” Jd. at 474. Now more than a decade after Wood, the circuits are split on whether a state’s decision to raise a proceduraldefault defense in its answer for some claims in a habeas petition, but not for others, waives the defense. When a federal court of appeals concludes that a procedural-default defense has been forfeited, it has discretion to forgive the forfeiture and “resurrect[]” the defense. Id. at 466. But the circuits are in disarray concerning the considerations that should guide the decision whether to forgive a forfeiture of a procedural-default defense. The questions presented are: 1. Whether a state waives a procedural-default defense when, in its answer to a state habeas petition in district court, it chooses to raise the defense to some claims in the petition but not to others? 2. Whether a court of appeals errs when it fails to consider the balance of the equities between the parties when deciding whether to forgive a state’s forfeited procedural default defense?