Michelet Michael Smith v. Keeley Anne Smith

Whether a state appellate court may treat as waived a preserved Fourteenth Amendment proce­ dural due process claim based on a hyper-technical subsection miscitation, where the court understood the substance of the federal claim and the application of the state rule is not strictly or regularly followed but is instead unexpectedly strict and outcome-deter­ minative (thus not an adequate and independent state ground).

Whether the Due Process Clause permits a state court to bypass a meaningful prejudice analysis and deem harmless;—by labeling “technical”—a defect af­ fecting notice and the opportunity to be heard (includ­ ing notice/service and subpoena routing), without identifying the operative order governing notice/routing; and without making any prejudice findings.

Whether due process is satisfied when the State creates a procedural “catch-22” by denying a party’s request for record completion/correction before merits briefing, and the appellate court later applies missing­ record presumptions to reject those same record-dependent federal due process claims.