PAEZ, Circuit Judge:

Dung Van Chau petitions for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which reversed the determination of the Immigration Judge (IJ) terminating deportation proceedings. The IJ held that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) failed to meet its threshold burden of establishing that Chau is an alien. The BIA, concluding that the INS had met its burden, ordered Chau deported to Vietnam pursuant to Immigration and Nationality Act’ (“INA”) § 241(a)(2)(A)(ii), 8 U.S.C. § 1251(a)(2)(A)(ii) (1994),1 as an alien convicted of two crimes of moral turpitude. Chau contends INA § 242(b)(5)(A), 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5)(A), entitles him to a determination by this court that he is a United States national and, therefore, not deportable. Alternatively, he requests that we transfer this matter to the United States District Court for Arizona for a *1028 de novo determination of his claim' to United States citizenship, pursuant to INA § 242(b)(5)(B), 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5)(B). We have jurisdiction to consider Chau’s citizenship claim under INA § 242(b)(5), 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5).2 As the INS concedes, Chau’s claim to United States citizenship is nonfrivolous, and he has identified genuine issues of material fact. Accordingly, we transfer this proceeding to the district court for a de novo determination of Chau’s claim of citizenship.

I.

Chau was born in Saigon, Vietnam, on November 8, 1971. His mother is Mai Chau, a Vietnamese citizen. He immigrated to the United States with his mother and half-brother in December, 1984, and became a permanent resident shortly thereafter. In 1996, the INS initiated deportation proceedings against Chau, charging that he is deportable as an alien convicted of two crimes of moral turpitude.

At his deportation hearing, Chau conceded he had been convicted of the two crimes but asserted that he is a citizen and therefore not deportable. In support of his citizenship claim, Chau introduced evidence that his father was a United States soldier stationed in Vietnam during the Vietnam conflict. Chau’s mother testified that she met Chau’s father in a bar in Saigon on several occasions, that he was African-American, and that he wore a United States military uniform. Chau’s mother further testified that Chau resembles his father in that he is tall, dark, and as a child had a dimple in his cheek like his father. Although the identity of the soldier is unknown, Chau contended that his father likely was a United States citizen and likely met the other necessary requirements to establish derivative citizenship under INA § 301, 8 U.S.C. § 1401.3 Chau also argued that he was admitted to the United States under Pub.L. No. 97-359, 96 Stat. 1716 (1982) (codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1154(f)),4 as the child of a United *1029States citizen and that his classification upon admission to the country rendered him a United States citizen..

The IJ found that although Chau admitted he was born in Vietnam, he is a derivative citizen. The IJ noted that, under the provisions of the Amerasian Immigration Act, Chau was admitted into the United States as a minor child of a United States citizen under the “immediate relative” category established by INA § 201(b)(2)(A), 8 U.S.C. § 1151(b)(2)(A), and 8 C.F.R. § 204.4(h), and that his father, in all likelihood, satisfied the residency requirements of INA § 301, 8 U.S.C. § 1401. The IJ then found that the INS failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Chau has no claim to United States citizenship and terminated the deportation proceeding.5

The INS appealed, and, on March 19, 1999, the BIA sustained the appeal and entered an order of deportation. The BIA, rejecting the IJ’s determination, concluded that Chau was born in Vietnam, that a presumption that he is an alien applied, and that he had failed to present sufficient credible evidence to rebut that presumption. In particular, the BIA rejected the IJ’s finding that Chau was admitted into the United States under the Amerasian Immigration Act. Moreover, the BIA concluded that, even assuming such status, he failed to present sufficient evidence showing that his unknown father satisfied the residency requirements for establishing derivative citizenship. Because Chau failed to establish a credible claim to United States citizenship, and because Chau admitted the prior felony convictions, the BIA ordered that he be deported to Vietnam.

Chau timely petitioned for review of the BIA’s order.

II.

Whenever a petitioner makes a claim to citizenship and the record presents no genuine issue of material fact about the petitioner’s nationality, a reviewing court must decide the nationality claim. INA § 242(b)(5)(A), 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5)(A). If the petitioner claims to be a United States citizen and the record presents a genuine issue of material fact as to the petitioner’s nationality, the reviewing court must transfer the proceeding to a district court for a de novo determination. INA § 242(b)(5)(B), 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5)(B). In determining whether a genuine issue of material fact exists, traditional summary judgment principles apply. Thus, “a court of appeals cannot refuse to allow a de novo review of a citizenship claim if the evidence presented in support of the claim would be sufficient to entitle a litigant to trial were such evidence presented in opposition to a motion for summary judgment.” Agosto v. INS, 436 U.S. 748, 756, 98 S.Ct. 2081, 2087, 56 L.Ed.2d 677 (1978).

III.

The INS concedes that Chau presented sufficient evidence in the deporta*1030tion hearing to raise genuine issues of material fact as to Chau’s claim to derivative citizenship under INA § 301 and that transfer to the district court for further proceedings therefore is appropriate. Our own review of the record convinces us that Chau’s claim is nonfrivolous and there are genuine issues of fact material to Chau’s claim to derivative citizenship: the identity of Chau’s father, whether Chau immigrated to the United States under the provisions of the Amerasian Immigration Act, and whether his father met the residency requirements of § 301. The evidence before the BIA would permit, although not compel, reasonable inferences supporting a conclusion that Chau’s father met the requirements of § 301. Under the circumstances, transfer to the district court for a de novo hearing on Chau’s claim is fully warranted.

IV.

This would be the end of the matter but for Chau’s contention that his entry into the United States under the Amerasian Immigration Act, Pub.L. No. 97-359, 96 Stat. 1716 (1982) (codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1154(f)), is undisputed and that such entry mandates a determination by this court that he is a citizen or that the only remaining factual question precluding a determination of citizenship is whether his father met the residency requirements of INA § 301, 8 U.S.C. § 1401 (1970). Although the evidence suggests that Chau was admitted to the United States under the provisions of the Amerasian Immigration Act, the evidence, as noted, is susceptible to varying interpretations. This factual issue should be resolved by the district court in the first instance. Nonetheless, given the substantial evidence presented by Chau surrounding the circumstances of how he immigrated to this country, we believe that it is appropriate to address Chau’s contention regarding the legal significance of entering the United States under the Amerasian Immigration Act.

Chau argues that Congress, in enacting the Amerasian Immigration Act, conferred citizenship on all persons immigrating to the United States under the provisions of that Act. Indeed, Chau’s counsel asserted at oral argument that “because of the unusual and preferential terms of the [Amerasian Immigration Act], he is ... a derivative citizen.” Alternatively, Chau argues that, because the Amerasian Immigration Act classifies its beneficiaries as children of United States citizens, entry into the United States under that Act (1) precludes the INS from contesting Chau’s claim that he is the child of a United States citizen and (2) leaves only the question of whether Chau’s father met the residency requirements of § 301. We do not agree with either argument!

In enacting the Amerasian Immigration Act, Congress sought to address the plight of Amerasian children left behind in Southeast Asia after American forces withdrew. As one congressional supporter stated, the Act “recognize[d] the moral responsibility that we have to [Amerasian] children who have been fathered by Americans abroad.” 128 Cong. Rec. 27270 (daily ed. Oct. 1, 1982) (statement of Rep. Rodino, Chairman of Committee on Judiciary). See also 128 Cong. Rec. 27271 (statement of Rep. Frank) (“I believe it is a matter of simple justice for us in the United States to welcome those children who were fathered by American servicemen in various Asian countries”); 128 Cong. Rec. 27272 (statement of Rep. Daschle) (“it is heartening to see us finally take this obvious action to right some of the wrong that has been perpetrated upon these children”). In recognition of that responsibility, Congress “provide[d] preferential treatment in the *1031admission” of such children. Pub.L. No. 97-359, 96 Stat. 1716 (1982). See also 128 Cong. Rec. 27273 (statement of Rep. Gil-man) (“this legislation ... will give [Amerasian children] No. 1 immigration status under our immigration laws for admission to this country”). Congress also put in place novel sponsorship provisions, which the Act’s supporters hoped would ensure “that [its beneficiaries] can be placed with proper sponsors when they come to our country.” 128 Cong. Rec. 27271 (statement of Rep. Mazzoli).

However, there is nothing in the Act or legislative history that suggests that Congress intended to grant citizenship status to those individuals admitted into the United States under the auspices of the Act. The Act provides, in relevant part:

□Preferential treatment for children fathered by United States citizens and born in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, or Thailand after 1950 and before October 22,1982.

(1) Any alien claiming to be an alien described in paragraph (2)(A) of this subsection (or any person on behalf of such an alien) may file a petition with the Attorney General for classification under [8 U.S.C.] section 1151(b), 1153(a)(1), or 1153(a)(3) ..., as appropriate. After an investigation of the facts of each case the Attorney General shall, if the conditions described in paragraph (2) are met, approve the petition ...

(2) The Attorney General may approve a petition for an alien under paragraph (1) if—

(A) he has reason to believe that the alien (i) was born in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, or Thailand after 1950 and before October 22, 1982, and (ii) was fathered by a United States citizen; ...

INA § 204(f), 8 U.S.C. § 1154(f). Sections 1151(b), 1153(a)(1), and 1153(a)(3) of Title 8, in turn, generally establish the right of children of United States citizens to obtain immigration visas free of any quota limitations or allow such children to benefit from liberalized quotas. See INA § 201(b), 8 U.S.C. § 1151(b)(2)(A)® (establishing category of children and other immediate relatives of citizens who are not subject to numerical visa limitations); INA § 203(a)(1), 8 U.S.C. § 1153(a)(1) (establishing category of unmarried sons and daughters of citizens subject to liberalized quotas); INA § 203(a)(3), 8 U.S.C. § 1153(a)(3) (establishing category of married sons and daughters of citizens subject to liberalized quotas).

Section 204(f) and the related provisions address only the rules for obtaining a visa to enter the United States. See INA § 201, 8 U.S.C. § 1151 (“Worldwide level of immigration”); INA § 203, 8 U.S.C. § 1153 (“Allocation of immigrant visas”); INA § 204, 8 U.S.C. § 1154 (“Procedure for granting immigrant status”). These provisions are entirely silent on the question of naturalization or citizenship.6

Similarly, neither § 204(f) nor the implementing regulations7 preclude the INS from contesting in proceedings to determine nationality whether an alien admitted under § 204(f) is in fact the child of a United States citizen. We decline to read into the statute or regulations such preclu-sive effect.

This does not mean that the Attorney General’s factual determinations when an *1032alien is admitted under § 204(f) cannot be considered in future proceedings before the district court. A determination by the Attorney General is itself evidence, which is to be given whatever “probative force” the determination “intrinsically commands.” See Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 495, 71 S.Ct. 456, 468, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951). See also Lim v. Mitchell, 431 F.2d 197, 199 (9th Cir.1970) (admission to country as citizen and issuance of certificate of identity constituted evidence of citizenship in judicial proceedings).

V.

Because we find that there are genuine factual disputes precluding a determination by this court of Chau’s derivative citizenship, we transfer this proceeding to the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, the district in which Chau resides, for a de novo hearing on Chau’s claim to United States citizenship. Sanchez-Sanchez v. INS, 957 F.2d 702, 703 (9th Cir.1992). We hold this petition for review in abeyance pending judicial determination of Chau’s claim to nationality. Id.8

MATTER TRANSFERRED TO DISTRICT COURT OF ARIZONA; PETITION FOR REVIEW HELD IN ABEYANCE.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER

MCNAMEE, Chief Judge.

This case was transferred to this Court from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for a de novo determination of Petitioner’s citizenship. Chau v. INS, 247 F.3d 1026, 1032 (9th Cir.2001). Since then, the Court has allowed the parties substantial time to develop the factual and legal bases for their positions. Pending before the Court is Respondent’s Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 54). While the Court has not conducted a hearing, it is capable of reaching a legal decision on the Record before it. Therefore, after considering the arguments raised by the parties in their briefings and the entire case file, the Court hereby issues the following Memorandum of Decision and Order.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The following facts are undisputed.

Mr. Chau (“Chau” or “Petitioner”) was born in Saigon, Vietnam on November 8, 1971. (Pet’r’s SOF ¶ 1; Resp’t’s SOF ¶ 1.) His mother, Thi Mai Chau (“Ms.Chau”), is a native and citizen of Vietnam. (Pet’r’s SOF ¶ 2; Resp’t’s SOF ¶ 7.) Neither Petitioner nor Ms. Chau know the specific identity of Petitioner’s father. (Pet’r’s Resp. at 7, lines 11-12; Resp’t’s SOF ¶ 11.) Ms. Chau claims that she met Petitioner’s father on two occasions at a bar in Vietnam and that she was pregnant one month after meeting. (Trans, of Deportation Hr’g at p. 74, lines 2-4, p. 75, line 11.) She reports that she did not speak English and Petitioner’s father did not speak Vietnamese. (Id. at p. 98, lines 1-6.) She states that he was in the U.S. forces in Vietnam because he was dressed in a paratrooper’s uniform when she met him. (Id. at lines 8-11.) Ms. Chau reports that his name was “Nick” (or “Net”) and that he was tall and dark with a dimple on a cheek. (Id. at lines 11, 20-24.) Ms. Chau states she has had no further contact with Petitioner’s father. (Id. at p. 75, lines 11-12.) She states that Petitioner resembles his father because he is tall and dark, and he had a *1161dimple on his cheek as a child. (Id. at lines 2-6.)

Petitioner states that his father was an African-American because he was given a nickname of “Dung Medan,” which means “Dung a Black American.” (Id. at p. 104, lines 24-25 — p. 105, line 1.) Petitioner entered the United States with his mother and half-brother on December 4, 1984 as a “refugee” under § 207 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.1 He was domiciled in Arizona from that time until he reached the age of twenty-one. On June 8, 1987, Petitioner’s status was adjusted to that of a lawful permanent resident alien.

PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”2 or “Respondent”) initiated deportation proceedings against Chau in 1996. The INS charged that Chau was subject to deportation because (1) he is not a citizen of the United States, and, (2) therefore, he is deportable pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(A)(ii) (1994), Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) § 241(a)(2)(A)(ii), as an alien convicted of two crimes involving moral turpitude not arising out of a single scheme of criminal misconduct.

In proceedings before the Immigration Judge (“IJ”), Chau asserted that he was not deportable; Chau claimed he is a derivative citizen of the United States pursuant to Section 301 of the INA (8 U.S.C. § 1401) and provisions of Pub.L. No. 97-359 (the “Amerasian Immigration Act”3 or “AIA”), 96 Stat. 1716 (1982) (codified in 8 U.S.C. § 1154(f)). Chau argued that because he was admitted to the United States as a child of a United States citizen under the AIA, and because § 301’s requirements were met, he established his derivative citizenship pursuant to Section 301(g) of the INA (8 U.S.C. § 1401).

On March 3, 1998, the IJ found that Chau entered the United States under the AIA, which provided evidence of his derivative citizenship. The IJ further determined that Chau’s father likely met the residency requirement of INA § 301. Consequently, the IJ concluded that the INS had failed to show that Chau had no claim to citizenship, and that Chau is a derivative citizen of the United States. Chau’s deportation proceedings were terminated. The INS appealed the IJ’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), and, on March 19, 1999, the BIA sustained the appeal and ordered Chau deported from the United States. The BIA rejected the IJ’s finding that Chau had entered the United States pursuant to the AIA and concluded that Chau failed to provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate *1162that his unknown father satisfied the residency requirement of INA § 301.

Chau then petitioned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for review of the BIA’s decision. Chau contended that “INA § 242(b)(5)(A), 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5)(A), entitles him to a determination by th[e] court that he is a United States national and, therefore, not deportable.” Chau v. INS, 247 F.3d 1026, 1027 (9th Cir.2001). In the alternative, Chau “request[ed] that [the court] transfer this matter to the United States District Court for Arizona for a de novo determination of his claim to United States citizenship, pursuant to INA § 242(b)(5)(B), 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5)(B).” Id. at 1027-28.

In his petition, Chau “contended] that his entry into the United States under the Amerasian Immigration Act ... is undisputed and that such entry mandates a determination by this court that he is a citizen or that the only remaining factual question precluding a determination of citizenship is whether his father met the residency requirements of INA § 301, 8 U.S.C. § 1401 (1970).” Id. at 1030. Chau also argued that he is “ ‘a derivative citizen’ ” because “Congress, in enacting the Amerasian Immigration Act, conferred citizenship on all persons immigrating to the United States under the provisions of that Act.” Id. In the alternative, he contended that

because the Amerasian Immigration Act classifies its beneficiaries as children of United States citizens, entry into the United States under that Act (1) precludes the INS from contesting [his] claim that he is the only child of a United States citizen and (2) leaves only the question of whether [his] father met the residency requirements of § 301.

Id. The Ninth Circuit did not adopt either argument. Id.

The Ninth Circuit also found that there were “genuine factual disputes precluding a determination ... of Chau’s derivative citizenship.” Id. at 1032. Therefore, the Ninth Circuit transferred the matter to this Court “for a de novo hearing on Chau’s claim to United States citizenship.” Id. The Ninth Circuit identified the following “genuine issues of fact material to Chau’s claim to derivative citizenship: the identity of Chau’s father, whether Chau immigrated to the United States under the provisions of the Amerasian Immigration Act, and whether his father met the residency requirement of § 301.” Id. at 1030.

On June 3, 2002 and September 9, 2002, this Court conducted status hearings. On October 18, 2002, the INS filed a Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 11), arguing that Chau could not establish derivative citizenship because he does not know the exact identity of his father. The Court denied that Motion on September 15, 2003. (Doc. No. 19) Addressing an issue initially raised by the Ninth Circuit in a footnote, Chau, 247 F.3d at 1032 n. 8, the Court found that Chau, as a child born out of wedlock, is required to meet the heightened proof-of-paternity requirement of INA § 309, as a matter of law. The Court further found that questions of fact remain regarding whether or not Chau can meet those proof-of-paternity requirements. In addition to that legitimation requirement, the Court reiterated the genuine issues of fact previously identified by the Ninth Circuit: [1] the identity of Chau’s father, [2] whether Chau immigrated to the United States under the provisions of the Amerasian Immigration Act, and [3] whether his father met the residency requirements of § 301. Subsequent to that Order, the parties engaged in further discovery until the filing of the instant Motion.

On August 10, 2005, the INS filed the pending Motion for Summary Judgment *1163(Doc. No. 54) which this Court now considers.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

A court must grant summary judgment if the pleadings and supporting documents, viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, “show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322-23, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); Jesinger v. Nevada Federal Credit Union, 24 F.3d 1127, 1130 (9th Cir.1994). Substantive law determines “which facts are material.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. 242, 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986); see also Jesinger, 24 F.3d at 1130. “Only disputes over facts that might affect the outcome of the suit under the governing law will properly preclude the entry of summary judgment.” Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505. The dispute must also be genuine, that is, the evidence must be “such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party.” Id.; see also Jesinger, 24 F.3d at 1130.

A principal purpose of summary judgment is “to isolate and dispose of factually unsupported claims.” Celotex, 477 U.S. at 323-24, 106 S.Ct. 2548. Summary judgment is appropriate “against a party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party’s case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial.” Id. at 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548; see also Citadel Holding Corp. v. Roven, 26 F.3d 960, 964 (9th Cir.1994). The moving party need not disprove matters on which the opponent has the burden of proof at trial. See Celotex, 477 U.S. at 325, 106 S.Ct. 2548. The party opposing summary judgment “may not rest upon the mere allegations or denials of the ... party’s pleadings, but ... must set forth specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(e); see Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio, 475 U.S. 574, 585-88, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986); Brinson v. Linda Rose Joint Venture, 53 F.3d 1044, 1049 (9th Cir.1995).

DISCUSSION

The Court now engages in a de novo review to determine whether Chau is able to establish eligibility for derivative citizenship pursuant to INA §§ 301 and 309 by the required preponderance of the evidence. Chau, 247 F.3d at 1032; See Sanchez-Martinez v. INS, 714 F.2d 72, 74 n. 1 (9th Cir.1983).

To prove derivative citizenship, under § 301, Chau must establish by a preponderance of the evidence that his father was a U.S. citizen at Chau’s birth and that his father was physically present in the United States for ten years, five of which occurred after the age of fourteen. In addition, because Chau was born out of wedlock, he must also show by a preponderance of the evidence that his father met INA § 309’s legitimation requirements. Nguyen v. INS, 533 U.S. 53, 59, 121 S.Ct. 2053, 150 L.Ed.2d 115 (2001). .If Chau establishes those three elements by a preponderance of the evidence, he derives U.S. citizenship and cannot be deported.

Before analyzing those three statutory elements, the Court first addresses an issue of fact which goes to Chau’s ability to establish the identity/citizenship of his father: whether Chau immigrated to the United States under the provisions of the Amerasian Immigration Act.

1. Whether Chau Immigrated to the United States under the AIA

Whether Chau immigrated to the United States under the AIA arises as an issue of *1164material fact through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ finding that, although not sufficient per se to convey citizenship, entry into the United States under the AIA “is itself evidence, which is to be given whatever ‘probative force’ the determination ‘intrinsically commands.’ ” Chau, 247 F.3d at 1030-31. Thus, if Chau entered the United States under the provisions of the AIA, his Amerasian immigration status would provide some evidence as to his father’s citizenship.

Although Chau previously argued that he entered the United States pursuant to the AIA (Doc. No. 15 at 4; Chau, 247 F.3d at 1030), he now admits that he actually entered into the United States as a “refugee” pursuant to INA § 207, 8 U.S.C. § 1157. (Doc. No. 61 at 4.) Nevertheless, Chau maintains that he was “sought out as a result of the [AIA] and deemed to be qualified for transfer to the United States under the [AIA].” (Id.) Chau entered the United States with his mother and half-brother, and argues that he entered under refugee status due to an anomaly in the AIA which required a mother to “irrevocably release” her child for immigration. (Id. at 4-5.) While the AIA does not allow a mother to accompany her child of a United States soldier father to the United States (8 U.S.C. § 1154(f)), refugee status contains no irrevocable release requirement and allows a family to immigrate together. (Resp.’t’s SOF, ¶ 18; Doc. No. 63 at Attachment 1, Report of Proposed Expert Witness.) Thus, Chau contends that even though he entered as a refugee, he was only “placed in this status in order to allow his family members to accompany him.” (Id. at 5.)

The INS, however, argues that the Attorney General, in granting refugee status, made no determination that Chau satisfied the requirements of the AIA. While the AIA required a “reason to believe” finding that Chau’s father was an American citizen (Doc. No. 63 at 4), the INS contends that refugee status on account of being Amerasian required only a finding that the appearance of the Amerasian applicant indicated that his father was other than Vietnamese. (Id.) Thus, a lower standard existed for attaining refugee status than that required under the AIA. Accordingly, INS argues that, with respect to Chau’s entry to the United States, U.S. Immigration officials made no determination that provides “probative force” as to Chau’s claim that his father was a United States citizen because he entered as a refugee. (Id.)

Whether or not Chau could have upheld a “reason to believe” finding before a U.S. Immigration official that his father was a United States citizen, however, is not before this Court. Rather, the undisputed fact remains that Chau was admitted to the United States under INA § 207’s refugee provision, which evidences no determination as to the citizenry of Chau’s father. Therefore, the first issue of fact identified by the Ninth Circuit has been resolved, as the parties agree that Chau entered the United States as a refugee, rather than under the AIA.

2. Identity I Citizenship of Chau’s Father

The Court now proceeds to the first of three elements Chau must show by a preponderance of evidence to establish derivative citizenship.

INA § 301 first requires Chau to furnish sufficient evidence from which a reasonable person may conclude that his father was a citizen of the United States at the time of Chau’s birth. See INA § 301, 8 U.S.C. § 1401; see also Chau, 247 F.3d at 1030. With Chau’s immigration status as a “refugee” pursuant to INA § 207 providing no evidence of Chau’s father’s *1165citizenship, Chau relies exclusively upon Ms. Chau’s recollections of his natural father to prove this element. Thus, Ms. Chau’s statements that Chau’s father’s name was “Nick,” that he appeared to be an African-American, and that he wore the uniform of an American paratrooper (Doc. No. 61 at 6) represent the sole evidence before this Court supporting Chau’s claim that his natural father was a U.S. citizen. The INS has neither produced nor proffered any evidence to contradict Ms. Chau’s statements. From Ms. Chau’s recollections regarding the identity of his father, Chau extrapolates that it is more likely than not, “statistically speaking,” that Chau’s father was a U.S. citizen.4 (Id. at 7.) Absent from Chau’s filings, however, is any statistical evidence to support this assertion.5

In summary judgment analysis this Court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and as such, this Court takes as true Ms. Chau’s statements for purposes of this Motion. Braxton-Secret, 769 F.2d at 530. Her pertinent statements are as follows:

Q: Was [Chau’s father] Vietnamese or American?

A. He was an American.

Q: How do you know he was an American?

A: Because he — he was in the U.S. forces in Vietnam. And when he get a leave, he visited me in the — in the bar and he was dressed in a — in the uniform of a paratroopers.

Trans, of Deportation H’rg at p. 74, lines 5-11.

Therefore, Ms. Chau’s statement that Chau’s natural father was an American is based on her recollection that he was in the U.S. forces, dressed in the uniform of a paratrooper. However, even taking as true her statement that he was in the U.S. forces and wore a paratrooper’s uniform, the Court notes that no evidence exists that a man who appears to be a U.S. serviceman must necessarily be one.

Moreover, service in the United States armed forces, in and of itself, does not confer citizenship on a serviceman. While the Court is unable to locate case law exactly on point, a related line of cases in which the alien-serviceman himself is attempting to change his immigration status to national is instructive. In Reyes-Alcaraz v. Ashcroft, the Ninth Circuit held that service in the U.S. armed forces does not alter an alien’s immigration status. 363 F.3d 937, 938 (9th Cir.2004); see also Theagene v. Gonzales, 411 F.3d 1107, 1112 (9th Cir.2005) (same). Therefore, participation in the armed forces is not per se evidence of citizenship.

Thus, even when Ms. Chau’s statements are taken as true, the Court finds a reasonable person could not find by a preponderance of the evidence that Chau’s father was a U.S. citizen. Regardless of whether Chau’s father appeared to be or actually was a U.S. serviceman, military service alone does not establish citizenship. Without more evidence than what is contained *1166in this case’s scant Record, it is unlikely that the parties would be able to successfully locate records providing independent evidence to support the facts asserted.

3. INA § 301’s Physical Presence Requirement

INA § 301 also requires that Chau provide sufficient evidence from which a reasonable person may conclude that Chau’s father, before Chau’s birth, was physically present in the United States for at least ten years, with at least five years of physical presence after his father’s fourteenth birthday.6 See INA § 301, 8 U.S.C. § 1401; see also Chau, 247 F.3d at 1030. A serviceman’s period of honorable service may be included to satisfy the physical presence requirement. INA § 301, 8 U.S.C. § 1401.

In arguing this issue, Chau states that “statistical evidence will demonstrate the probability that his father ... met the residency requirements” (Doc. No. 61 at 7.) However, as with the identity of his father, Chau furnishes no statistical evidence to support his assertion.

Chau may not rest upon the mere allegations or denials of ... [his] pleadings, but ... must set forth specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial. Fed. R. Crv. P. 56(c); Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co., 475 U.S. at 585-88, 106 S.Ct. 1348. Further, the INS need not disprove matters on which Chau has the burden of proof at trial. Celotex, 477 U.S. at 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548. Without facts or evidence, the Court cannot infer that Chau’s father met § 301’s physical presence requirement. To do otherwise would be to engage in pure speculation.

Therefore, given Chau’s failure to produce any evidence regarding § 301’s physical presence requirement, this Court finds the record lacking in evidence upon which a reasonable person could find that Chau’s father met that requirement.7 Furthermore, because a “complete failure of proof concerning an essential element of the nonmoving party’s claim necessarily renders all other facts immaterial,” this Court must find all other facts immaterial. Id. at 323,106 S.Ct. 2548.

4. INA § 309’s Legitimation Requirement

The final element Chau must establish by a preponderance of the evidence is the legitimation requirement of INA § 309. See Nguyen, 533 U.S. at 59, 121 S.Ct. 2053. Although the Court hereby incorporates pages five through eleven of its September 15, 2003 Order (Doc. No. 19) regarding the legitimation requirement, the Court now summarizes its previous findings.

At the outset, the Court notes that two versions of § 309 exist. Because Chau was born before 1986 when the statute was amended, he “falls within a transitional rule which allows him to elect application of either” the post- or pre-1986 version of § 309. Id., 533 U.S. at 60, 121 S.Ct. 2053. In its previous Order, the Court assumed that Chau would elect application of the pre-1986 version of § 309, as it is less rigorous than the post-1986 version.8

*1167As outlined by the Court in its previous Order, INA § 309 (8 U.S.C. § 1409) cross-references § 8 U.S.C. 1101(c)(1), which provides:

The term “child” means an unmarried person under twenty-one years of age and includes a child legitimated under the law of the child’s residence or domicile, or under the law of the father’s residence or domicile, whether in the United States or elsewhere, ... if such legitimation ... takes place before the child reaches the age of sixteen years, and the child is in the legal custody of the legitimating ... parent or parents ... at the time of such legitimation.

8 U.S.C. 1101(c)(1) (1982). Thus, Chau must be legitimated according to the law of Arizona, where he was domiciled, and Chau must have been in the legal custody of his father as defined by Arizona law, in order to meet the third element for derivative citizenship.

The Court previously analyzed Arizona’s legitimacy law, which provides that “[e]very child is the legitimate child of its natural parents and is entitled to support and education as if born in lawful wedlock.” Ariz.Rev.Stat. § 8-601 (1975). The Court concluded in its previous Order that this issue constituted an issue of fact because the identity of Chau’s father was unknown.

In order to meet § 309’s legitimation requirement, Chau must also have been in his father’s legal custody according to Arizona law. In its September 2003 Order, this Court examined Arizona law regarding custody and found that Chau would have been in the legal custody of his father if “parentage has been established.” See In re Appeal in Maricopa County Juvenile Action No. JD-4974, 163 Ariz. 60, 785 P.2d 1248, 1250 (1990). The Court again concluded that an issue of fact existed, as the identity of Chau’s father was unknown.

While the Court therefore previously found that an issue of fact existed as to this legitimation requirement, the Court now finds that these facts are necessarily rendered immaterial due to Chau’s complete failure of proof concerning § 301’s citizenship and physical presence elements. Celotex, 477 U.S. at 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548.

CONCLUSION

In reaching its decision, the Court is mindful that this ease presents difficult issues and that the application of the law may result in hardship. However, the Court is bound to apply the law. After having provided both sides ample opportunity to marshal evidence and brief the law, the Court finds that, as a matter of law, Chau has “fail[ed] to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to [his] case” because he has not provided (1) sufficient evidence that his father is a U.S. citizen and (2) any evidence to establish INA § 301’s physical presence requirement. See id. at 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548. Consequently, because the Court finds that Chau has failed to provide facts sufficient to entitle him to relief as a matter of law, the Court will grant INS’s Motion for Summary Judgment.

Therefore, having conducted the de novo determination regarding Chau’s claim of U.S. citizenship as requested by the Ninth Circuit, ■

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Respondent’s Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 54) is GRANTED. The Clerk of the Court shall terminate this action accordingly.

*1168IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this matter is returned to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for further proceedings.

McKAY, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner Jeffrey Brue, also known as Hung Van Liederbach, petitions for review of a final order of removal issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which affirmed the decision of an immigration judge (IJ), that he is an alien and removable because he committed an aggravated felony. Exercising jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252, we DENY the petition for review.

I.

Petitioner was born in Vietnam in 1968. He has been told that his mother abandoned him at an early age because of his Amerasian characteristics. In 1973, he emigrated to the United States and was admitted as a lawful permanent resident. He was placed with a foster family, the Van Liederbachs, and lived with them until 1977. Petitioner alleges that he was physically, sexually, and emotionally abused by Mr. Van Liederbach and an older adopted sister.

Petitioner was next placed with Keith and Madonna Brue, who adopted him in 1978. Petitioner lived with the Brues in Wisconsin until approximately 1982 when he was placed for a year in a juvenile facility known as Ladd Lake due to behavioral problems including fights at school and temper tantrums at home. He received medication and therapy at Ladd Lake, but was exposed to other troubled youth and sexual advances. Petitioner then returned to the Brues, attempted suicide after his best friend was killed, and was placed at a juvenile residential treatment facility, Odyssey House, where he received therapy. In connection with this placement, the Brues surrendered legal custody to the Dane County Department of Human Services.

The Brues filed Form N-402, titled “Application to File Petition for Naturalization in Behalf of Child” (Application), Admin. R. at 330, with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).1 The Brues’ signatures on the Application are dated April 21, 1985. According to the Application, Mr. Brue indicated that petitioner was mentally disturbed, was not in the Brues’ legal custody, had been living at Odyssey House since May 1983, and would *1230not return to live with the Brues at anytime in the future. The Application contains a “Nonfiled” box, in which was written “not residing with parents in legal custody.” Id. at 332.

After his discharge from Odyssey House, petitioner engaged in a series of criminal acts in Wisconsin resulting in a variety of arrests, charges, and sentences. In 1990, he moved to Colorado and, in 1992, pleaded guilty to a violation of Colo. Rev.Stat. § 18-3-403 (repealed 2000), sexual assault in the second degree, based on a sexual encounter with a twelve-year-old girl. Petitioner claims the girl told him she was sixteen and that the encounter was consensual. He was sentenced to eight years’ confinement and served approximately five years, receiving counseling and therapy for his diagnosed bipolar disorder and his sexual misconduct. In 2000, petitioner pleaded guilty to a violation of Colo.Rev.Stat. § 18-6-701, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, based on offering drugs to a minor male in exchange for sex. He was sentenced to four years’ confinement.2

Upon his release in 2003, the Department of Homeland Security served petitioner with a Notice to Appear (NTA), charging him with removability pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(ii) and (iii) based on his convictions of two separate crimes involving moral turpitude and on his conviction of an aggravated felony, sexual abuse of a minor. Petitioner denied the majority of the charges in the NTA, asserted that he was a United States citizen, and requested a variety of forms of relief from removal, including, as relevant here, restriction on removal under 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3).

II.

Initially, David Cordova was the IJ assigned to the administrative proceeding. The record reflects that he held two preliminary hearings, one in December 2003 and one on June 17, 2004, at which petitioner’s counsel argued that petitioner lacked the mental competency to understand the nature of the charges against him or assist in his own defense. Immigration Judge Cordova expressed concern about petitioner’s competency and indicated that he would sign an order for an evaluation if counsel for both parties could agree on its contents and petitioner’s counsel provided a proposed order. See, e.g., Admin. R. at 65-66. The record contains a proposed order that accompanies an unsigned copy of a motion requesting the Immigration Court to order a mental health evaluation. See Admin. R. at 621-24. It is unclear whether the motion or the proposed order were ever filed.

Immigration Judge Cordova then stopped hearing cases, and a new immigration judge assigned to the case, J.P. Van-dello, held five hearings between June 30 and December 7, 2004. Petitioner testified about his history at length, including many of the details set forth above, in particular those surrounding the 1992 and 2000 felony offenses. Petitioner also called a psychologist, Dr. Kim, as a witness. Dr. Kim had reviewed petitioner’s records and conducted a two-hour mental status exam in July 2004. He testified that petitioner has an IQ score in the mild mental retardation range and a gamut of psychiatric symptoms, including transitory suicidal thoughts; depression; bizarre thinking and behavior, including persecutory idea*1231tion; psychotic or formal thought disorder symptoms such as auditory and visual hallucinations on an intermittent basis; and bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders. Dr. Kim also testified that petitioner believes someone had put a chip in his ear and something in his food. Dr. Kim opined that petitioner would benefit from treatment in a residential group home and is not a threat to physically assault others.

Immigration Judge Vandello issued a written decision in which he found that petitioner was not a United States citizen, was removable because his 1992 and 2000 offenses were aggravated felonies or crimes involving moral turpitude, and was not eligible for or entitled to any of the requested relief. He did not make any finding concerning petitioner’s competency, but did note that petitioner has a “serious mental illness,” Admin. R. at 57. He ordered petitioner removed to Vietnam. The BIA declined to administratively close the proceedings due to petitioner’s alleged incompetence, substantially agreed with the IJ’s decision, and dismissed the appeal. This petition for review followed.

III.

In this court, petitioner does not challenge the categorization of his 1992 and 2000 offenses as aggravated felonies. Instead, he raises the following arguments: (1) because he met the statutory requirements for naturalization when the Brues tendered the 1985 Application on his behalf, he automatically acquired citizenship and is therefore not subject to removal; (2) the removal proceedings violated his Fifth Amendment due process rights because he is mentally incompetent; and (3) the agency failed to consider the appropriate factors when finding that he had committed a “particularly serious crime” and therefore was not eligible for restriction on removal pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3).

We have limited jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 to review a final order of removal. Ordinarily, we may review citizenship claims provided there are no disputed issues of material fact. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5). In contrast, we lack jurisdiction if, as here, a petitioner is subject to removal for commission of an aggravated felony under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). See id. § 1252(a)(2)(C). However, through the REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub.L. No. 109-13, 119 Stat. 231 (2005), Congress expressly granted us jurisdiction to review constitutional claims and questions of law raised in a petition for review notwithstanding statutory limitations such as § 1252(a)(2)(C). See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D). As Congress explained:

[T]he purpose of [§ 1252(a)(2)(D) ] is to permit judicial review over those issues that were historically reviewable on ha-beas — constitutional and statutory-construction questions, not discretionary or factual questions. When a court is presented with a mixed question of law and fact, the court should analyze it to the extent there are legal elements, but should not review any factual elements.

H.R.Rep. No. 109-72, at 175 (2005).

We conclude that, notwithstanding the aggravated felony bar, we have jurisdiction over the entirety of the petition in this case pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D). To the extent petitioner claims he automatically acquired citizenship because he met the statutory requirements at the time the Brues filed the 1985 Application on his behalf, we have jurisdiction to review this as a question of law because the facts are undisputed and resolution turns on interpretation of the applicable statutory section. See Abiodun v. Gonzales, 461 F.3d 1210, 1215-16 (10th Cir.2006) (exercising jurisdiction to consider whether, on undisputed material facts, a petitioner who filed a naturalization appli*1232cation satisfied the public ceremony requirement of 8 U.S.C. § 1448 by signing an oath of allegiance and so became a United States national).3 To the extent that petitioner makes a due process argument, he raises constitutional and statutory-construction issues that clearly fall within § 1252(a)(2)(D). See Morgan v. Attorney General, 432 F.3d 226, 229 (3d Cir.2005). And as for the agency’s determination that petitioner committed a particularly serious crime, we conclude that it does not present, as respondents argue, a completely unreviewable discretionary decision. “While we cannot reweigh evidence to determine if the crime was indeed particularly serious, we can determine [under the REAL ID Act] whether the BIA applied the correct legal standard in making its determination.” Afridi v. Gonzales, 442 F.3d 1212, 1218 (9th Cir.2006). We review each of the issues raised in the petition de novo. See Niang v. Gonzales, 422 F.3d 1187, 1196 (10th Cir.2005) (legal questions); Agosto v. INS, 436 U.S. 748, 753, 98 S.Ct. 2081, 56 L.Ed.2d 677 (1978) (citizenship).

Petitioner argues that, when the Brues presented the Application to the INS in 1985, he met all the conditions of 8 U.S.C. § 1434 permitting the naturalization of adopted children; therefore, he argues, he automatically became a United States citizen. As respondents correctly point out, however, § 1434 was repealed in 1978, and Congress amended 8 U.S.C. § 1433 so that it applied to adopted children instead. See Pub.L. No. 95-417, §§ 6-7, 92 Stat. 917 (1978). At the time the Brues presented the Application to the INS in 1985, § 1433 permitted naturalization of an adopted child “only if the child is residing in the United States, in the custody of the adoptive parent or parents, pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence.” 8 U.S.C. § 1433(b) (1982) (amended 1986, 1990, 1994, 1999, 2000, 2002). This condition clearly was not met here because petitioner was residing at Odyssey House, not in the legal or physical custody of the Brues. Accordingly, petitioner could not automatically have become a United States citizen by virtue of simply tendering the Application to file a petition to naturalize even if automatic acquisition of citizenship would be permissible under the statute, an issue on which we express no opinion.

Petitioner next argues that the removal proceedings violated his due process rights because Immigration Judge Vandello elected to ignore the issue of petitioner’s mental competency, which he *1233contends prevented him from understanding the nature of the proceedings and assisting in his defense. We disagree.4 Aliens are not necessarily entitled to the full range of due process protections afforded to criminal defendants. See INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032, 1038, 104 S.Ct. 3479, 82 L.Ed.2d 778 (1984); Nee Hao Wong v. INS, 550 F.2d 521, 523 (9th Cir.1977). “Rather, the procedural safeguards are minimal because aliens do not have a constitutional right to enter or remain in the United States.” Schroeck v. Gonzales, 429 F.3d 947, 951-52 (10th Cir.2005) (quotation omitted). Accordingly, we have held that, “when facing removal, aliens are entitled only to procedural due process, which provides the opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner.” Id. at 952 (quotations omitted). Thus, contrary to the substantive due process protection from trial and conviction to which a mentally incompetent criminal defendant is entitled, see Smith v. Mullin, 379 F.3d 919, 930 (10th Cir.2004), removal proceedings may go forward against incompetent aliens, Nee Hao Wong, 550 F.2d at 523.

Removal proceedings against mentally incompetent aliens, however, are not without constraint. Congress has provided that, “[i]f it is impracticable by reason of an alien’s mental incompetency for the alien to be present at the proceeding, the Attorney General shall prescribe safeguards to protect the rights and privileges of the alien.” 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(b)(3). Pursuant to this statutory directive, the Attorney General has prescribed the following:

When it is impracticable for the respondent to be present at the hearing because of mental incompetency, the attorney, legal representative, legal guardian, near relative, or friend who was served with a copy of the notice to appear shall be permitted to appear on behalf of the respondent. If such a person cannot reasonably be found or fails or refuses to appear, the custodian of the respondent shall be requested to appear on behalf of the respondent.

8 C.F.R. § 1240.4. The regulation suggests that, when mental incompetence makes an alien’s presence at a removal proceeding impracticable, an IJ may conduct the proceeding provided that the alien is represented by an attorney or other person; a custodian is required only when the alien has no other representative.

As respondents point out, the statute and the regulation facially appear to require no procedural safeguards if an unrepresented, mentally incompetent alien is nevertheless able to be present at his removal proceeding. We need not delve into this issue because, even assuming petitioner was incompetent at the time of his removal proceedings, an issue we expressly do not decide, he was represented by counsel. Accordingly, the IJ had no obligation under either the statute or the regulation to consider petitioner’s mental competency because the procedural safeguards they envision were already in place.

Additionally, petitioner received the process he is due under the Fifth Amendment because he has not shown that the removal proceedings caused him prejudice, a requirement for a successful *1234due process challenge, see Berrum-Garcia v. Comfort, 390 F.3d 1158, 1165 (10th Cir.2004). Petitioner’s counsel asserts that, due to petitioner’s mental status, petitioner was unable to identify facts, evidence, or potential witnesses that would support his applications for relief. However, petitioner’s claim of citizenship and most of his requests for relief from removal turned on undisputed facts or legal issues unaffected by his competence. Although his testimony occasionally drifted off point, he largely was able to answer the questions posed to him and provide his version of the facts surrounding his past, particularly the details of his conviction for the 1992 offense, second degree sexual assault. The details of that conviction are central to his argument, discussed below, that it was not a “particularly serious crime” because, according to him, the twelve-year-old victim consented and no force was involved. However, his mental state did not preclude him from relating these details, and the IJ specifically recounted them in his decision. Accordingly, we conclude that the removal proceedings provided petitioner with the opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner.

Petitioner’s final argument concerns his request for restriction on removal, which he is entitled to if he can show that removal to Vietnam would threaten his life or freedom based on his race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, see 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A). However, this relief is not available to an alien who has committed a “particularly serious crime.” Id. § 1231(b)(3)(B)(ii). The IJ determined that petitioner’s 1992 and 2000 offenses each qualify as a “particularly serious crime.”5

The statute provides no helpful guidance in defining “particularly serious crime” as it relates to petitioner.6 In Matter of Frentescu, the BIA set forth factors to which it looks in judging the seriousness of a crime: (1) the nature, circumstances, and underlying facts of the conviction, (2) the type of sentence, and (3) “most importantly, whether the type and circumstances of the crime indicate that the alien will be a danger to the community.” Matter of Frentescu, 18 I. & N. Dec. 244, 247 (BIA 1982), superseded in part on other grounds by statute, The Immigration Act of 1990, Pub.L. No. 101-649, § 515, 104 Stat. 4978, 5053 (1990).

The IJ, fully aware of the facts of the 1992 offense, concluded that it was a particularly serious crime because the victim of the sexual assault was a child of twelve and petitioner was a danger to the community. The BIA, also aware of the full factual background of that offense, recited two of the Frentescu factors, including the most important one, danger to the community, and agreed with the IJ. We are satisfied that both the IJ and the BIA considered the appropriate factors in reaching *1235their conclusions as to the 1992 offense. The BIA did not reach the question of whether the 2000 offense was a particularly serious crime. As the statute requires a conviction of only one particularly serious crime in order to render an alien ineligible for restriction on removal, this was an appropriate disposition.

For the foregoing reasons, we DENY the petition for review.

Justice Kennedy

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents a question not resolved by a majority of the Court in a case before us three Terms ago. See Miller v. Albright, 523 U. S. 420 (1998). Title 8 U. S. C. § 1409 governs the acquisition of United States citizenship by persons born to one United States citizen parent and one noncitizen parent when the parents are unmarried and the child is born outside of the United States or its possessions. The statute imposes different requirements for the child’s acquisition of citizenship depending upon whether the citizen parent is *57the mother or the father. The question before us is whether the statutory distinction is consistent with the equal protection guarantee embedded in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

I

Petitioner Tuan Anh Nguyen was born in Saigon, Vietnam, on September 11, 1969, to copetitioner Joseph Boulais and a Vietnamese citizen. Boulais and Nguyen’s mother were not married. Boulais always has been a citizen of the United States, and he was in Vietnam under the employ of a corporation. After he and Nguyen’s mother ended their relationship, Nguyen lived for a time with the family of Boulais’ new Vietnamese girlfriend. In June 1975, Nguyen, then almost six years of age, came to the United States. He became a lawful permanent resident and was raised in Texas by Boulais.

In 1992, when Nguyen was 22, he pleaded guilty in a Texas state court to two counts of sexual assault on a child. He was sentenced to eight years in prison on each count. Three years later, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) initiated deportation proceedings against Nguyen as an alien who had been convicted of two crimes involving moral turpitude, as well as an aggravated felony. See 8 U. S. C. §§ 1227(a)(2)(A)(ii) and (iii) (1994 ed., Supp. IV). Though later he would change his position and argue he was a United States citizen, Nguyen testified at his deportation hearing that he was a citizen of Vietnam. The Immigration Judge found him deportable.

Nguyen appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals and, in 1998, while the matter was pending, his father obtained an order of parentage from a state court, based on DNA testing. By this time, Nguyen was 28 years old. The Board dismissed Nguyen’s appeal, rejecting his claim to United States citizenship because he had failed to establish compliance with 8 U. S. C. § 1409(a), which sets forth the re*58quirements for one who was born out of wedlock and abroad to a citizen father and a noncitizen mother.

Nguyen and Boulais appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, arguing that § 1409 violates equal protection by providing different rules for attainment of citizenship by children born abroad and out of wedlock depending upon whether the one parent with American citizenship is the mother or the father. The court rejected the constitutional challenge to § 1409(a). 208 F. 3d 528, 535 (2000).

The constitutionality of the distinction between unwed fathers and mothers was argued in Miller, but a majority of the Court did not resolve the issue. Four Justices, in two different opinions, rejected the challenge to the gender-based distinction, two finding the statute consistent with the Fifth Amendment, see 523 U. S., at 423 (opinion of Stevens, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J.), and two concluding that the court could not confer citizenship as a remedy even if the statute violated equal protection, see id., at 452 (Scalia, J., joined by Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). Three Justices reached a contrary result, and would have found the statute violative of equal protection. Id., at 460 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Souter and Breyer, JJ., dissenting); id., at 471 (Breyer, J., joined by Souter and Gins-BURG, JJ., dissenting). Finally, two Justices did not reach the issue as to the father, having determined that the child, the only petitioner in Miller, lacked standing to raise the equal protection rights of his father. Id., at 445 (O’Connor, J., joined by Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment).

Since Miller, the Courts of Appeal have divided over the constitutionality of §1409. Compare 208 F. 3d 528 (CA5 2000) (case below) with Lake v. Reno, 226 F. 3d 141 (CA2 2000), and United States v. Ahumada-Aguilar, 189 F. 3d 1121 (CA9 1999). We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict. 530 U. S. 1305 (2000). The father is before the Court in this case; and, as all agree he has standing to raise the constitutional claim, we now resolve it. We hold that § 1409(a) *59is consistent with the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

II

The general requirement for acquisition of citizenship by a child born outside the United States and its outlying possessions and to parents who are married, one of whom is a citizen and the other of whom is an alien, is set forth in 8 U. S. C. § 1401(g). The statute provides that the child is also a citizen if, before the birth, the citizen parent had been physically present in the United States for a total of five years, at least two of which were after the parent turned 14 years of age.

As to an individual born under the same circumstances, save that the parents are unwed, § 1409(a) sets forth the following requirements where the father is the citizen parent and the mother is an alien:

"(1) a blood relationship between the person and the father is established by clear and convincing evidence,

“(2) the father had the nationality of the United States at the time of the person’s birth,

“(3) the father (unless deceased) has agreed in writing to provide financial support for the person until the person reaches the age of 18 years, and

“(4) while the person is under the age of 18 years—

“(A) the person is legitimated under the law of the person’s residence or domicile,

“(B) the father acknowledges paternity of the person in writing under oath, or

“(C) the paternity of the person is established by adjudication of a competent court.”

In addition, § 1409(a) incorporates by reference, as to the citizen parent, the residency requirement of § 1401(g).

When the citizen parent of the child born abroad and out of wedlock is the child’s mother, the requirements for the transmittal-of citizenship are described in § 1409(c):

*60“(c) Notwithstanding the provision of subsection (a) of this section, a person born, after December 23, 1952, outside the United States and out of wedlock shall be held to have acquired at birth the nationality status of his mother, if the mother had the nationality of the United States at the time of such person’s birth, and if the mother had previously been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year.”

Section 1409(a) thus imposes a set of requirements on the children of citizen fathers born abroad and out of wedlock to a noncitizen mother that are not imposed under like circumstances when the citizen parent is the mother. All concede the requirements of §§ 1409(a)(3) and (a)(4), relating to a citizen father’s acknowledgment of a child while he is under 18, were not satisfied in this case. We need not discuss § 1409(a)(3), however. It was added in 1986, after Nguyen’s birth; and Nguyen falls within a transitional rule which allows him to elect application of either the current version of the statute, or the pre-1986 version, which contained no parallel to § 1409(a)(3). See Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1986, 100 Stat. 3655; note following 8 U. S. C. § 1409; Miller, supra, at 426, n. 3, 432 (opinion of Stevens, J.). And in any event, our ruling respecting § 1409(a)(4) is dispositive of the case. As an individual seeking citizenship under § 1409(a) must meet all of its preconditions, the failure to satisfy § 1409(a)(4) renders Nguyen ineligible for citizenship.

rH hH b-H

For a gender-based classification to withstand equal protection scrutiny, it must be established “‘at least that the [challenged] classification serves “important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed” are “substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.” ’ ” United States v. Virginia, 518 U. S. 515, 533 *61(1996) (quoting Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 468 U. S. 718, 724 (1982), in turn quoting Wengler v. Druggists Mut. Ins. Co., 446 U. S. 142, 150 (1980)). For reasons to follow, we conclude §1409 satisfies this standard. Given that determination, we need not decide whether some lesser degree of scrutiny pertains because the statute implicates Congress’ immigration and naturalization power. See Miller, 523 U. S., at 434, n. 11 (explaining that the statute must be subjected to a standard more deferential to the congressional exercise of the immigration and naturalization power, but that “[ejven if . . . the heightened scrutiny that normally governs gender discrimination claims applied in this context,” the statute would be sustained (citations omitted)).

Before considering the important governmental interests advanced by the statute, two observations concerning the operation of the provision are in order. First, a citizen mother expecting a child and living abroad has the right to reenter the United States so the child can be born here and be a 14th Amendment citizen. From one perspective, then, the statute simply ensures equivalence between two expectant mothers who are citizens abroad if one chooses to reenter for the child’s birth and the other chooses not to return, or does not have the means to do so. This equivalence is not a factor if the single citizen parent living abroad is the father. For, unlike the unmarried mother, the unmarried father as a general rule cannot control where the child will be born.

Second, although § 1409(a)(4) requires certain conduct to occur before the child of a citizen father, born out of wedlock and abroad, reaches 18 years of age, it imposes no limitations on when an individual who qualifies under the statute can claim citizenship. The statutory treatment of citizenship is identical in this respect whether the citizen parent is the mother or the father. A person born to a citizen parent of either gender may assert citizenship, assuming compliance *62with statutory preconditions, regardless of his or her age. And while the conditions necessary for a citizen mother to transmit citizenship under § 1409(c) exist at birth, citizen fathers and/or their children have 18 years to satisfy the requirements of § 1409(a)(4). See Miller, supra, at 435 (opinion of Stevens, J.).

The statutory distinction relevant in this case, then, is that § 1409(a)(4) requires one of three affirmative steps to be taken if the citizen parent is the father, but not if the citizen parent is the mother: legitimation; a declaration of paternity under oath by the father; or a court order of paternity. Congress’ decision to impose requirements on unmarried fathers that differ from those on unmarried mothers is based on the significant difference between their respective relationships to the potential citizen at the time of birth. Specifically, the imposition of the requirement for a paternal relationship, but not a maternal one, is justified by two important governmental objectives. We discuss each in turn.

A

The first governmental interest to be served is the importance of assuring that a biological parent-child relationship exists. In the case of the mother, the relation is verifiable from the birth itself. The mother’s status is documented in most instances by the birth certificate or hospital records and the witnesses who attest to her having given birth.

In the case of the father, the uncontestable fact is that he need not be present at the birth. If he is present, furthermore, that circumstance is not incontrovertible proof of fatherhood. See Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U. S. 248, 260, n. 16 (1983) (“ ‘The mother carries and bears the child, and in this sense her parental relationship is clear. The validity of the father’s parental claims must be gauged by other measures’ ” (quoting Caban v. Mohammed, 441 U. S. 380, 397 (1979) (Stewart, J., dissenting))); Trimble v. Gordon, 430 *63U. S. 762, 770 (1977) (“The more serious problems of proving paternity might justify a more demanding standard for illegitimate children claiming under their fathers’ estates than that required . . . under their mothers’ estates . . Fathers and mothers are not similarly situated with regard to the proof of biological parenthood. The imposition of a different set of rules for making that legal determination with respect to fathers and mothers is neither surprising nor troublesome from a constitutional perspective. Cf. Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432, 439 (1985) (explaining that the Equal Protection Clause “is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike”); F S. Royster Guano Co. v. Virginia, 253 U. S. 412, 415 (1920). Section 1409(a)(4)’s provision of three options for a father seeking to establish paternity — legitimation, paternity oath, and court order of paternity — is designed to ensure an acceptable documentation of paternity.

Petitioners argue that the requirement of § 1409(a)(1), that a father provide clear and convincing evidence of parentage, is sufficient to achieve the end of establishing paternity, given the sophistication of modern DNA tests. Brief for Petitioners 21-24. Section 1409(a)(1) does not actually mandate a DNA test, however. The Constitution, moreover, does not require that Congress elect one particular mechanism from among many possible methods of establishing paternity, even if that mechanism arguably might be the most scientifically advanced method. With respect to DNA testing, the expense, reliability, and availability of such testing in various parts of the world may have been of particular concern to Congress. See Miller, supra, at 437 (opinion of Stevens, J.). The requirement of § 1409(a)(4) represents a reasonable conclusion by the legislature that the satisfaction of one of several alternatives will suffice to establish the blood link between father and child required as a predicate to the child’s acquisition of citizenship. Cf. Lehr, supra, *64at 267-268 (upholding New York statutory requirement that gave mothers of children born out of wedlock notice of an adoption hearing, but only extended that right to fathers ¡ who mailed a postcard to a “putative fathers registry”). Given the proof of motherhood that i^ inherent in birth itself, it is unremarkable that Congress did not require the same affirmative steps of mothers.

Finally, to require Congress to speak without reference to the gender of the parent with regard to its objective of ensuring a blood tie between parent and child would be to insist on a hollow neutrality. As Justice Stevens pointed out in Miller, Congress could have required both mothers and fathers to prove parenthood within 30 days or, for that matter, 18 years, of the child’s birth. 523 U. S., at 436. Given that the mother is always present at birth, but that the father need not be, the facially neutral rule would sometimes require fathers to take additional affirmative steps which would not be required of mothers, whose names will appear on the birth certificate as a result of their presence at the birth, and who will have the benefit of witnesses to the birth to call upon. The issue is not the use of gender specific terms instead of neutral ones. Just as neutral terms can mask, discrimination that is unlawful, gender specific terms can mark a permissible distinction. The equal protection question is whether the distinction is lawful. Here, the use of gender specific terms takes into account a biological difference between the parents. The differential treatment is inherent in a sensible statutory scheme, given the unique relationship of the mother to the event of birth.

B

1

The second important governmental interest furthered in a substantial manner by § 1409(a)(4) is the determination to ensure that the child and the citizen parent have some demonstrated opportunity or potential to develop not just a *65relationship that is recognized, as a formal matter, by the law, but one that consists of the real, everyday ties that provide a connection between child and citizen parent and, in turn, the United States. See id., at 438-440 (opinion of Stevens, J.). In the case of a citizen mother and a child born overseas, the opportunity for a meaningful relationship between citizen parent and child inheres in the very event of birth, an event so often critical to our constitutional and statutory understandings of citizenship. The mother knows that the child is in being and is hers and has an initial point of contact with him. There is at least an opportunity for mother and child to develop a real, meaningful relationship.

The same opportunity does not result from the event of birth, as a matter of biological inevitability, in the case of the unwed father. Given the 9-month interval between conception and birth, it is not always certain that a father will know that a child was conceived, nor is it always clear that even the mother will be sure of the father’s identity. This fact takes on particular significance in the case of a child born overseas and out of wedlock. One concern in this context has always been with young people, men for the most part, who are on duty with the Armed Forces in foreign countries. See Department of Defense, Selected Manpower Statistics 48, 74 (1999) (reporting that in 1969, the year in which Nguyen was born, there were 3,458,072 active duty military personnel, 39,506 of whom were female); Department of Defense, Selected Manpower Statistics 29 (1970) (noting that 1,041,094 military personnel were stationed in foreign countries in 1969); Department of Defense, Selected Manpower Statistics 49, 76 (1999) (reporting that in 1999 there were 1,385,703 active duty military personnel, 200,287 of whom were female); id., at 33 (noting that 252,763 military personnel were stationed in foreign countries in 1999).

When we turn to the conditions which prevail today, we find that the passage of time has produced additional and even more substantial grounds to justify the statutory dis*66tinction. The ease of travel and the willingness of Americans to visit foreign countries have resulted in numbers of trips abroad that must be of real concern when we contemplate the prospect of accepting petitioners’ argument, which would mandate, contrary to Congress’ wishes, citizenship by male parentage subject to no condition save the father’s previous length of residence in this country. In 1999 alone, Americans made almost 25 million trips abroad, excluding trips to Canada and Mexico. See U. S. Dept. of Commerce, 1999 Profile of U. S. Travelers to Overseas Destinations 1 (Oct. 2000). Visits to Canada and Mexico add to this figure almost 34 million additional visits. See U. S. Dept, of Commerce, U. S. Resident Travel to Overseas Countries, Historical Visitation 1989-1999, p. 1 (Oct. 2000). And the average American overseas traveler spent 15.1 nights out of the United States in 1999. 1999 Profile of U. S. Travelers to Overseas Destinations, supra, at 4.

Principles of equal protection do not require Congress to ignore this reality. To the contrary, these facts demonstrate the critical importance of the Government’s interest in ensuring some opportunity for a tie between citizen father and foreign born child which is a reasonable substitute for the opportunity manifest between mother and child at the time of birth. Indeed, especially in light of the number of Americans who take short sojourns abroad, the prospect that a father might not even know of the conception is a realistic possibility. See Miller, supra, at 489 (opinion of Stevens, J.). Even if a father knows of the fact of conception, moreover, it does not follow that he will be present at the birth of the child. Thus, unlike the case of the mother, there is no assurance that the father and his biological child will ever meet. Without an initial point of contact with the child by a father who knows the child is his own, there is no opportunity for father and child to begin a relationship. Section 1409 takes the unremarkable step of ensuring that such an opportunity, inherent in the event of birth as to the *67mother-child relationship, exists between father and child before citizenship is conferred upon the latter.

The importance of the governmental interest at issue here is too profound to be satisfied merely by conducting a DNA test. The fact of paternity can be established even without the father’s knowledge, not to say his presence. Paternity can be established by taking DNA samples even from a few strands of hair, years after the birth. See Federal Judicial Center, Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence 497 (2d ed. 2000). Yet scientific proof of biological paternity does nothing, by itself, to ensure contact between father and child during the child’s minority.

Congress is well within its authority in refusing, absent proof of at least the opportunity for the development of a relationship between citizen parent and child, to commit this country to embracing a child as a citizen entitled as of birth to the full protection of the United States, to the absolute right to enter its borders, and to full participation in the political process. If citizenship is to be conferred by the unwitting means petitioners urge, so that its acquisition abroad bears little relation to the realities of the child’s own ties and allegiances, it is for Congress, not this Court, to make that determination. Congress has not taken that path but has instead chosen, by means of § 1409, to ensure in the case of father and child the opportunity for a relationship to develop, an opportunity which the event of birth itself provides for the mother and child. It should be unobjectionable for Congress to require some evidence of a minimal opportunity for the development of a relationship with the child in terms the male can fiilfill.

While the INS’ brief contains statements indicating the governmental interest we here describe, see Brief for Respondent 38, 41, it suggests other interests as well. Statements from the INS’ brief are not conclusive as to the objects of the statute, however, as we are concerned with the objectives of Congress, not those of the INS. We ascertain the *68purpose of a statute by drawing logical conclusions from its text, structure, and operation.

Petitioners and their amici argue in addition that, rather than fulfilling an important governmental interest, §1409 merely embodies a gender-based stereotype. Although the above discussion should illustrate that, contrary to petitioners’ assertions, § 1409 addresses an undeniable difference in the circumstance of the parents at the time a child is born, it should be noted, furthermore, that the difference does not result from some stereotype, defined as a frame of mind resulting from irrational or uncritical analysis. There is nothing irrational or improper in the recognition that at the moment of birth — a critical event in the statutory scheme and in the whole tradition of citizenship law — the mother’s knowledge of the child and the fact of parenthood have been established in a way not guaranteed in the case of the unwed father. This is not a stereotype. See Virginia, 518 U. S., at 533 (“The heightened review standard our precedent establishes does not make sex a proscribed classification. . . . Physical differences between men and women . . . are enduring”).

2

Having concluded that facilitation of a relationship between parent and child is an important governmental interest, the question remains whether the means Congress chose to further its objective — the imposition of certain additional requirements upon an unwed father — substantially relate to that end. Under this test, the means Congress adopted must be sustained.

First, it should be unsurprising that Congress decided to require that an opportunity for a parent-child relationship occur during the formative years of the child’s minority. In furtherance of the desire to ensure some tie between this country and one who seeks citizenship, various other statutory provisions concerning citizenship and naturalization require some act linking the child to the United States to *69occur before the child reaches 18 years of age. See, e. g., 8 U. S. C. § 1431 (child born abroad to one citizen parent and one noncitizen parent shall become a citizen if, inter alia, the noncitizen parent is naturalized before the child reaches 18 years of age and the child begins to reside in the United States before he or she turns 18); § 1432 (imposing same conditions in the case of a child born abroad to two alien parents who are naturalized).

Second, petitioners argue that § 1409(a)(4) is not effective. In particular, petitioners assert that, although a mother will know of her child’s birth, “knowledge that one is a parent, no matter how it is acquired, does not guarantee a relationship with one’s child.” Brief for Petitioners 16. They thus maintain that the imposition of the additional requirements of § 1409(a)(4) only on the children of citizen fathers must reflect a stereotype that women are more likely than men to actually establish a relationship with their children. Id., at 17.

This line of argument misconceives the nature of both the governmental interest at issue and the manner in which we examine statutes alleged to violate equal protection. As to the former, Congress would of course be entitled to advance the interest of ensuring an actual, meaningful relationship in every case before citizenship is conferred. Or Congress could excuse compliance with the formal requirements when an actual father-child relationship is proved. It did neither here, perhaps because of the subjectivity, intrusiveness, and difficulties of proof that might attend an inquiry into any particular bond or tie. Instead, Congress enacted an easily administered scheme to promote the different but still substantial interest of ensuring at least an opportunity for a parent-child relationship to develop. Petitioners’ argument confuses the means and ends of the equal protection inquiry; § 1409(a)(4) should not be invalidated because Congress elected to advance an interest that is less demanding to satisfy than some other alternative.

*70Even if one conceives of the interest Congress pursues as the establishment of a real, practical relationship of considerable substance between parent and child in every case,. as opposed simply to ensuring the potential for the relationship to begin, petitioners’ misconception of the nature of the equal protection inquiry is fátal to their argument. A statute meets the equal protection standard we here apply so long as it is “‘“substantially related to the achievement of’”” the governmental objective in question. Virginia, supra, at 533 (quoting Hogan, 458 U. S., at 724, in turn quoting Wengler, 446 U. S., at 150). It is almost axiomatic that a policy which seeks to foster the opportunity for meaningful parent-child bonds to develop has a close and substantial bearing on the governmental interest in the actual formation of that bond. None of our gender-based classification equal protection cases have required that the statute under consideration must be capable of achieving its ultimate objective in every instance. In this difficult context of conferring citizenship on vast numbers of persons, the means adopted by Congress are in substantial furtherance of important governmental objectives. The fit between the means and the important end is “exceedingly persuasive.” See Virginia, supra, at 533. We have explained that an “exceedingly persuasive justification” is established “by showing at least that the classification serves • ‘important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed’ are ‘substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.’ ” Hogan, supra, at 724 (citations omitted). Section 1409 meets this standard.

C

In analyzing § 1409(a)(4), we are mindful that the obligation it imposes with respect to the acquisition of citizenship by the child of a citizen father is minimal. This circumstance shows that Congress has not erected inordinate and unnecessary hurdles to the conferral of citizenship on the *71children of citizen fathers in furthering its important objectives. Only the least onerous of the three options provided for in § 1409(a)(4) must be satisfied. If the child has been legitimated under the law of the relevant jurisdiction, that will be the end of the matter. See § 1409(a)(4)(A). In the alternative, a father who has not legitimated his child by formal means need only make a written acknowledgment of paternity under oath in order to transmit citizenship to his child, hardly a substantial burden. See § 1409(a)(4)(B). Or, the father could choose to obtain a court order of paternity. See § 1409(a)(4)(C). The statute can be satisfied on the day of birth, or the next day, or for the next 18 years. In this case, the unfortunate, even tragic, circumstance is that Boulais did not pursue, or perhaps did not know of, these simple steps and alternatives. Any omission, however, does not nullify the statutory scheme.

Section 1409(a), moreover, is not the sole means by which the child of a citizen father can attain citizenship. An individual who fails to comply with § 1409(a), but who has substantial ties to the United States, can seek citizenship in his or her own right, rather than via reliance on ties to a citizen parent. See, e. g., 8 U. S. C. §§ 1423, 1427. This option now may be foreclosed to Nguyen, but any bar is due to the serious nature of his criminal offenses, not to an equal protection denial or to any supposed rigidity or harshness in the citizenship laws.

IV

The statutory scheme’s satisfaction of the equal protection scrutiny we apply to gender-based classifications constitutes a sufficient basis for upholding it. It should be noted, however, that, even were we to conclude that the statute did not meet this standard of review, petitioners would face additional obstacles before they could prevail.

The INS urges that, irrespective of whether § 1409(a) is constitutional, the Court cannot grant the relief petitioners request: the conferral of citizenship on terms other than *72those specified by Congress. There may well be “potential problems with fashioning a remedy” were we to find the statute unconstitutional. See Miller, 523 U. S., at 451 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment); cf. id., at 445, n. 26 (opinion of Stevens, J.) (declining to address the question whether the Court could confer the sought-after remedy). Two Members of today’s majority said in Miller that this argument was dispositive. See id., at 452-459 (Scalia, J., joined by Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). Petitioners ask us to invalidate and sever §§ 1409(a)(3) and (a)(4), but it must be remembered that severance is based on the assumption that Congress would have intended the result. See id., at 457 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (citing New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144 (1992)). In this regard, it is significant that, although the Immigration and Nationality Act contains a general severability provision, Congress expressly provided with respect to the very sub-chapter of the United States Code at issue and in a provision entitled “Sole procedure” that “[a] person may only be naturalized as a citizen of the United States in the manner and under the conditions prescribed in this subchapter and not otherwise.” 8 U. S. C. § 1421(d); see also Miller, supra, at 457-458 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). Section 1421(d) refers to naturalization, which in turn is defined as “conferring of nationality of a state upon a person after birth.” 8 U. S. C. § 1101(a)(23). Citizenship under § 1409(a) is retroactive to the date of birth, but it is a naturalization under § 1421(d) nevertheless. The conditions specified by § 1409(a) for conferral of citizenship, as a matter of definition, must take place after the child is born, in some instances taking as long as 18 years. Section 1409(a), then, is subject to the limitation imposed by § 1421(d).

In light of our holding that there is no equal protection violation, we need not rely on this argument. For the same reason, we need not assess the implications of statements in our earlier cases regarding the wide deference afforded to *73Congress in the exercise of its immigration and naturalization power. See, e. g., Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U. S. 787, 792-793, and n. 4 (1977) (quoting Galvan v. Press, 347 U. S. 522, 531 (1954)); 430 U. S., at 792 (quoting Oceanic Steam Nav. Co. v. Stranakan, 214 U. S. 320, 339 (1909)). These arguments would have to be considered, however, were it to be determined that §1409 did not withstand conventional equal protection scrutiny.

V

To fail to acknowledge even our most basic biological differences — such as the fact that a mother must be present at birth but the father need not be — risks making the guarantee of equal protection superficial, and so disserv-ing it. Mechanistic classification of all our differences as stereotypes would operate to obscure those misconceptions and prejudices that are real. The distinction embodied in the statutory scheme here at issue is not marked by misconception and prejudice, nor does it show disrespect for either class. The difference between men and women in relation to the birth process is a real one, and the principle of equal protection does not forbid Congress to address the problem at hand in a manner specific to each gender.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is

Affirmed.

Justice Scalia,

with whom Justice Thomas joins, concurring.

I remain of the view that the Court lacks power to provide relief of the sort requested in this suit — namely, conferral of citizenship on a basis other than that prescribed by Congress. See Miller v. Albright, 523 U. S. 420, 452 (1998) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). A majority of the Justices in Miller having concluded otherwise, see id., at 423 (opinion of Stevens, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J.); id., at 460 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Souter and Breyer, JJ., dissenting); id., at 471 (Breyer, J., joined by Souter and *74Ginsburg, JJ., dissenting); and a majority of the Court today proceeding on the same assumption; I think it appropriate for me to reach the merits of petitioners’ equal protection claims. I join the opinion of the Court.

Justice O’Connor,

with whom Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.

In a long line of cases spanning nearly three decades, this Court has applied heightened scrutiny to legislative classifications based on sex. The Court today confronts another statute that classifies individuals on the basis of their sex. While the Court invokes heightened scrutiny, the manner in which it explains and applies this standard is a stranger to our precedents. Because the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has not shown an exceedingly persuasive justification for the sex-based classification embodied in 8 U. S. C. § 1409(a)(4) — i. e., because it has failed to establish at least that the classification substantially relates to the achievement of important governmental objectives — I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

I — <

Sex-based statutes, even when accurately reflecting the way most men or women behave, deny individuals opportunity. Such generalizations must be viewed not in isolation, but in the context of our Nation’s “‘long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination.’” J E. B. v. Alabama ex rel. I B., 511 U. S. 127, 136 (1994) (quoting Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677, 684 (1973) (plurality opinion)). Sex-based generalizations both reflect and reinforce “fixed notions concerning the roles and abilities of males and females.” Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U. S. 718, 725 (1982).

For these reasons, a party who seeks to defend a statute that classifies individuals on the basis of sex “must carry the burden of showing an ‘exceedingly persuasive justification’ for the classification.” Id., at 724 (quoting Kirchberg v. *75 Feenstra, 450 U. S. 455, 461 (1981)); see also United States v. Virginia, 518 U. S. 515, 531 (1996). The defender of the classification meets this burden “only by showing at least that the classification serves ‘important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed’ are ‘substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.’ ” Mississippi Univ. for Women, supra, at 724 (quoting Wengler v. Druggists Mut. Ins. Co., 446 U. S. 142, 150 (1980)); see also Virginia, 518 U. S., at 533.

Our cases provide significant guidance concerning the meaning of this standard and how a reviewing court is to apply it. This Court’s instruction concerning the application of heightened scrutiny to sex-based classifications stands in stark contrast to our elucidation of the rudiments of rational basis review. To begin with, under heightened scrutiny, “ft]he burden of justification is demanding and it rests entirely on [the party defending the classification].” Ibid. Under rational basis scrutiny, by contrast, the defender of the classification “has no obligation to produce evidence to sustain the rationality of a statutory classification.” Heller v. Doe, 509 U. S. 312, 320 (1993). Instead, “RJhe burden is on the one attacking the legislative arrangement to negative every conceivable basis which might support it, whether or not the basis has a foundation in the record.” Id., at 320-321 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

Further, a justification that sustains a sex-based classification “must be genuine, not hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation.” Virginia, supra, at 533. “[T]he mere recitation of a benign, compensatory purpose is not an automatic shield which protects against any inquiry into the actual purposes underlying a statutory scheme.” Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U. S. 636, 648 (1975). Under rational basis review, by contrast, it is “‘constitutionally irrelevant [what] reasoning in fact underlay the legislative decision.’ ” Railroad Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U. S. 166, *76179 (1980) (quoting Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S, 603, 612 (1960)).

Heightened scrutiny does not countenance justifications that “rely on overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females.” Virginia, supra, at 533. Rational basis review, by contrast, is much more tolerant of the use of broad generalizations about different classes of individuals, so long as the classification is not arbitrary or irrational. See, e. g., Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 528 U. S. 62, 84 (2000); Fritz, supra, at 177.

Moreover, overbroad sex-based generalizations are impermissible even when they enjoy empirical support. See, e. g., J. E. B., supra, at 139, n. 11; Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190, 199 (1976); Wiesenfeld, supra, at 645. Under rational basis scrutiny, however, empirical support is not even necessary to sustain a classification. See, e.g., FCC v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U. S. 307, 315 (1993) (“[A] legislative choice is not subject to courtroom factfinding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data”).

The different burdens imposed by these equal protection standards correspond to the different duties of a reviewing court in applying each standard. The court’s task in applying heightened scrutiny to a sex-based classification is clear: “Focusing on the differential treatment or denial of opportunity for which relief is sought, the reviewing court must determine whether the proffered justification is 'exceedingly persuasive.’” Virginia, 518 U. S., at 532-533. In making this determination, the court must inquire into the actual purposes of the discrimination,, for “a tenable justification must describe actual state purposes, not rationalizations for actions in fact differently grounded.” Id., at 535-536; see also id., at 533; Wiesenfeld, supra, at 648; Califano v. Goldfarb, 430 U. S. 199, 212-217 (1977) (plurality opinion); id., at 219-221 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). The *77rational basis standard, on the other hand, instructs that “a classification ‘must be upheld against equal protection challenge if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.’” Heller, supra, at 320 (quoting Beach Communications, supra, at 313). This standard permits a court to hypothesize interests that might support legislative distinctions, whereas heightened scrutiny limits the realm of justification to demonstrable reality.

These different standards of equal protection review also set different bars for the magnitude of the governmental interest that justifies the statutory classification. Heightened scrutiny demands that the governmental interest served by the classification be “important,” see, e. g., Virginia, supra, at 533, whereas rational basis scrutiny requires only that the end be “legitimate,” see, e. g., Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U. S. 1,10 (1992).

The most important difference between heightened scrutiny and rational basis review, of course, is the required fit between the means employed and the ends served. Under heightened scrutiny, the discriminatory means must be “substantially related” to an actual and important governmental interest. See, e. g., Virginia, supra, at 533. Under rational basis scrutiny, the means need only be “rationally related” to a conceivable and legitimate state end. See, e. g., Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432, 440 (1985).

The fact that other means are better suited to the achievement of governmental ends therefore is of no moment under rational basis review. See, e. g., Vance v. Bradley, 440 U. S. 93, 103, n. 20 (1979) (“Even were it not irrelevant to [rational basis review] that other alternatives might achieve approximately the same results . . .”); Massachusetts Bd. of Retirement v. Murgia, 427 U. S. 307, 316 (1976) (per curiam) (“[T]he State perhaps has not chosen the best means to accomplish this purpose. But where rationality is the test, a *78State ‘does not violate the Equal Protection Clause merely because the classifications made by its laws are imperfect’ ” (quoting Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471, 485 (1970))), But because we require a much tighter fit between means ánd ends under heightened scrutiny, the availability of sex-neutral alternatives to a sex-based classification is often highly probative of the validity of the classification. See, e. g., Wengler, 446 U. S., at 151 (invalidating a sex-based classification where a sex-neutral approach would completely serve the needs of both classes); Orr v. Orr, 440 U. S. 268, 281 (1979) (finding “no reason, therefore, to use sex as a proxy for need” where the alimony statute already provided for individualized hearings that took financial circumstances into account); Wiesenfeld, 420 U. S., at 653 (finding a gender-based distinction to be “gratuitous” where “without it, the statutory scheme would only provide benefits to those men who are in fact similarly situated to the women the statute aids”).

II

The Court recites the governing substantive standard for heightened scrutiny of sex-based classifications, see ante, at 60-61, 70, but departs from the guidance of our precedents concerning such classifications in several ways. In the first sentence of its equal protection analysis, the majority glosses over the crucial matter of the burden of justification. Ante, at 60 (“For a gender-based classification to withstand equal protection scrutiny, it must be established . . .”); see also ante, at 70. In other circumstances, the Court’s use of an impersonal construction might represent a mere elision of what we have stated expressly in our prior cases. Here, however, the elision presages some of the larger failings of the opinion.

For example, the majority hypothesizes about the interests served by the statute and fails adequately to inquire into the actual purposes of § 1409(a)(4). The Court also does not always explain adequately the importance *79of the interests that it claims to be served by the provision. The majority also fails carefully to consider whether the sex-based classification is being used impermissibly “as a ‘proxy for other, more germane bases of classification,’ ” Mississippi Univ. for Women, 458 U. S., at 726 (quoting Craig, 429 U. S., at 198), and instead casually dismisses the relevance of available sex-neutral alternatives. And, contrary to the majority’s conclusion, the fit between the means and ends of § 1409(a)(4). is far too attenuated for the provision to survive heightened scrutiny. In all, the majority opinion represents far less than the rigorous application of heightened scrutiny that our precedents require.

A

According to the Court, “[t]he first governmental interest to be served is the importance of assuring that a biological parent-child relationship exists.” Ante, at 62. .The majority does not elaborate on the importance of this interest, which presumably lies in preventing fraudulent conveyances of citizenship. Nor does the majority demonstrate that this is one of the actual purposes of § 1409(a)(4). Assuming that Congress actually had this purpose in mind in enacting parts of § 1409(a)(4), cf. Miller v. Albright, 523 U. S. 420, 435-436 (1998) (opinion of Stevens, J.), the INS does not appear to rely on this interest in its effort to sustain § 1409(a)(4)’s sex-based classification. Cf. Brief for Respondent 11 (claiming that § 1409 serves “at least two important interests: first, ensuring that children who are born abroad out of wedlock have, during their minority, attained a sufficiently recognized or formal relationship to their United States citizen parent — and thus to the United States — to justify the conferral of citizenship upon them; and second, preventing such children from being stateless”). In light of the reviewing court’s duty to “determine whether the proffered justification is ‘exceedingly persuasive,’ ” Virginia, 518 U. S., at 533, this disparity between the majority’s defense of the statute *80and the INS’ proffered justifications is striking, to say the least.

The gravest defect in the Court’s reliance on this interest, however, is the insufficiency of the fit between § 1409(a)(4)’s discriminatory means and the asserted end. Section 1409(c) imposes no particular burden of proof on mothers wishing to convey citizenship to their children. By contrast, § 1409(a)(1), which petitioners do not challenge before this Court, requires that “a blood relationship between the person and the father [be] established by clear and convincing evidence.” Atop § 1409(a)(1), § 1409(a)(4) requires legitimation, an acknowledgment of paternity in writing under oath, or an adjudication of paternity before the child reaches the age of 18. It is difficult to see what § 1409(a)(4) accomplishes in furtherance of “assuring that a biological parent-child relationship exists,” ante, at 62, that § 1409(a)(1) does not achieve on its own. The virtual certainty of a biological link that modern BNA testing affords reinforces the sufficiency of § 1409(a)(1). See Miller, supra, at 484-486 (Breyer, J., dissenting).

It is also difficult to see how § 1409(a)(4)’s limitation of the time allowed for obtaining proof of paternity substantially furthers the assurance of a blood relationship. Modern DNA testing, in addition to providing accuracy unmatched by other methods of establishing a biological link, essentially negates the evidentiary significance of the passage of time. Moreover, the application of § 1409(a)(l)’s “clear and convincing evidence” requirement can account for any effect that the passage of time has on the quality of the evidence.

The Court criticizes petitioners’ reliance on the availability and sophistication of modern DNA tests, ante, at 63, but appears to misconceive the relevance of such tests. No one argues that § 1409(a)(1) mandates a DNA test. Legitimation or an adjudication of paternity, see §§ 1409(a)(4)(A), (C), may well satisfy the “clear and convincing” standard of *81§ 1409(a)(1). (Satisfaction of § 1409(a)(4) by a written acknowledgment of paternity under oath, see § 1409(a)(4)(B), would seem to do little, if anything, to advance the assurance of a blood relationship, further stretching the means-end fit in this context.) Likewise, petitioners’ argument does not depend on the idea that one particular method of establishing paternity is constitutionally required. Petitioners’ argument rests instead on the fact that, if the goal is to obtain proof of paternity, the existence of a statutory provision governing such proof, coupled with the efficacy and availability of modern technology, is highly relevant to the sufficiency of the tailoring between § 1409(a)(4)’s sex-based classification and the asserted end. Because § 1409(a)(4) adds little to the work that § 1409(a)(1) does on its own, it is difficult to say that § 1409(a)(4) “substantially furthers” an important governmental interest. Kirchberg, 450 U. S., at 461.

The majority concedes that Congress could achieve the goal of assuring a biological parent-child relationship in a sex-neutral fashion, but then, in a surprising turn, dismisses the availability of sex-neutral alternatives as irrelevant. As the Court suggests, “Congress could have required both mothers and fathers to prove parenthood within 30 days or, for that matter, 18 years, of the child’s birth.” Ante, at 64 (citing Miller, supra, at 436 (opinion of Stevens, J.)). Indeed, whether one conceives the majority’s asserted interest as assuring the existence of a biological parent-child relationship, ante, at 62, or as ensuring acceptable documentation of that relationship, ante, at 63, a number of sex-neutral arrangements — including the one that the majority offers— would better serve that end. As the majority seems implicitly to acknowledge at one point, ante, at 62, a mother will not alwáys have formal legal documentation of birth because a birth certificate may not issue or may subsequently be lost. Conversely, a father’s name may well appear on a birth certificate. While it is doubtless true that a mother’s blood re*82lation to a child is uniquely “verifiable from the birth itself” to those present at birth, ibid., the majority has not shown that a mother’s birth relation is uniquely verifiable by the INS, much less that any greater verifiability warrants a sex-based, rather than a sex-neutral, statute.

In our prior cases, the existence of comparable or superior sex-neutral alternatives has been a powerful reason to reject a sex-based classification. See supra, at 78. The majority, however, turns this principle on its head by denigrating as “hollow” the very neutrality that the law requires. Ante, at 64. While the majority trumpets the availability of superior sex-neutral alternatives as confirmation of § 1409(a)(4)’s validity, our precedents demonstrate that this fact is a decided strike against the law. Far from being “hollow,” the avoidance of gratuitous sex-based distinctions is the hallmark of equal protection. Cf. J. E. B., 511 U. S., at 152-153 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment) (“ ‘At the heart of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial [or] sexual. . . class’ ” (quoting Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U. S. 547, 602 (1990) (O’Connor, J., dissenting))).

The majority’s acknowledgment of the availability of sex-neutral alternatives scarcely confirms the point that “[t]he differential treatment is inherent in a sensible statutory scheme.” Ante, at 64. The discussion instead demonstrates that, at most, differential impact will result from the fact that “[f]athers and mothers are not similarly situated with regard to the proof of biological parenthood.” Ante, at 63. In other words, it will likely be easier for mothers to satisfy a sex-neutral proof of parentage requirement. But facially neutral laws that have a disparate impact are a different animal for purposes of constitutional analysis than laws that specifically provide for disparate treatment. We have long held that the differential impact of a facially neutral law does not trigger heightened scrutiny, see, e.g., *83 Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229 (1976), whereas we apply heightened scrutiny to laws that facially classify individuals on the basis of their sex. See, e. g., United States v. Virginia, 518 U. S. 515 (1996); see also J. E. B., supra, at 152 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment) (“[0]ur case law does reveal a strong- presumption that gender classifications are invalid”); Parham v. Hughes, 441 U. S. 347, 351 (1979) (plurality opinion) (“Not all legislation, however, is entitled to the same presumption of validity.... [T]he presumption of statutory validity may also be undermined when a State has enacted legislation creating classes based upon certain other immutable human attributes” (citing, inter alia, Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971))).

If rational basis scrutiny were appropriate in this case, then the claim that “[t]he Constitution . . . does not require that Congress elect one particular mechanism from among many possible methods of establishing paternity,” ante, at 63, would have much greater force. So too would the claim that “[t]he requirement of § 1409(a)(4) represents a reasonable conclusion . . . .” Ibid. But fidelity to the Constitution’s pledge of equal protection demands more when a facially sex-based classification is at issue. This is hot because we sit in judgment of the wisdom of laws in one instance but not the other, cf. Beach Communications, 508 U. S., at 313, but rather because of the potential for “injury ... to personal dignity,” J. E. B., supra, at 153 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment), that inheres in or accompanies so many sex-based classifications.

B

The Court states that “[t]he second important governmental interest furthered in a substantial manner by § 1409(a)(4) is the determination to ensure that the child and the citizen parent have some demonstrated opportunity or potential to develop not just a relationship that is recognized, as a formal matter, by the law, but one that consists of the real, *84everyday ties that provide a connection between child and citizen parent and, in turn, the United States.” Ante, at 64-65. The Court again fails to demonstrate that this was Congress’ actual purpose in enacting § 1409(a)(4). The majority’s focus on “some demonstrated opportunity or potential to develop ... real, everyday ties” in fact appears to be the type of hypothesized rationale that is insufficient under heightened scrutiny. See supra, at 75-77.

The INS asserts the governmental interest of “ensuring that children who are born abroad out of wedlock have, during their minority, attained a sufficiently recognized or formal relationship to their United States citizen parent— and thus to the United States — to justify the conferral of citizenship upon them.” Brief for Respondent 11. The majority’s asserted end, at best, is a simultaneously watered-down and beefed-up version of this interest asserted by the INS. The majority’s rendition is weaker than the INS’ in that it emphasizes the “opportunity or potential to. develop” a relationship rather than the actual relationship about which the INS claims Congress was concerned. The majority’s version is also stronger in that it goes past the formal relationship apparently desired by the INS to “real, everyday ties.”

Assuming, as the majority does, that Congress was actually concerned about ensuring a “demonstrated opportunity” for a relationship, it is questionable whether such an opportunity qualifies as an “important” governmental interest apart from the existence of an actual relationship. By focusing on “opportunity” rather than reality, the majority presumably improves the chances of a sufficient means-end fit. But in doing so, it dilutes significantly the weight of the interest. It is difficult to see how, in this citizenship-conferral context, anyone profits from a “demonstrated opportunity” for a relationship in the absence of the fruition of an actual tie. Children who have an “opportunity” for such a tie with a parent, of course, may never develop an actual rela*85tionship with that parent. See Miller, 523 U. S., at 440 (opinion of Stevens, J.). If a child grows up in a foreign country without any postbirth contact with the citizen parent, then the child’s never-realized “opportunity” for a relationship with the citizen seems singularly irrelevant to the appropriateness of granting citizenship to that child. Likewise, where there is an actual relationship, it is the actual relationship that does all the work in rendering appropriate a grant of citizenship, regardless of when and how the opportunity for that relationship arose.

Accepting for the moment the majority’s focus on “opportunity,” the attempt to justify § 1409(a)(4) in these terms is still deficient. Even if it is important “to require that an opportunity for a parent-child relationship occur during the formative years of the child’s minority,” ante, at 68, it is difficult to see how the requirement that 'proof of such opportunity be obtained before the child turns 18 substantially furthers the asserted interest. As the facts of this case demonstrate, ante, at 67, it is entirely possible that a father and child will have the opportunity to develop a relationship and in fact will develop a relationship without obtaining the proof of the opportunity during the child’s minority. After his parents’ relationship had ended, petitioner Nguyen lived with the family of his father’s new girlfriend. In 1975, before his sixth birthday, Nguyen came to the United States, where he was reared by his father, petitioner Boulais. In 1997, a DNA test showed a 99.98% probability of paternity, and, in 1998, Boulais obtained an order of parentage from a Texas court.

Further underscoring the gap between the discriminatory means and the asserted end is the possibility that “a child might obtain an adjudication of paternity ‘absent any affirmative act by the father, and perhaps even over his express objection.’” Miller, 523 U. S., at 486 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (quoting id., at 434 (opinion of Stevens, J.)). The fact that the means-end fit can break down so readily *86in theory, and not just in practice, is hardly characteristic of a “substantial” means-end relationship.

Moreover, available sex-neutral alternatives would at least replicate, and could easily exceed, whatever fit there is between § 1409(a)(4)’s discriminatory means and the majority’s asserted end. According to the Court, § 1409(a)(4) is designed to ensure that fathers and children have the same “opportunity which the event of birth itself provides for the mother and child.” Ante, at 67. Even assuming that this is so, Congress could simply substitute for § 1409(a)(4) a requirement that the parent be present at birth or have knowledge of birth. Cf. Miller, supra, at 487 (Breyer, J., dissenting). Congress could at least allow proof of such presence or knowledge to be one way of demonstrating an opportunity for a relationship. Under the present law, the statute on its face accords different treatment to a mother who is by nature present at birth and a father who is by choice present at birth even though those two individuals are similarly situated with respect to the “opportunity” for a relationship. The mother can transmit her citizenship at birth, but the father cannot do so in the absence of at least one other affirmative act. The different statutory treatment is solely on account of the sex of the similarly situated individuals. This type of treatment is patently inconsistent with the promise of equal protection of the laws. See, e. g., Reed, 404 U. S., at 77 (“By providing dissimilar treatment for men and women who are thus similarly situated, the challenged section violates the Equal Protection Clause”).

Indeed, the idea that a mother’s presence at birth supplies adequate assurance of an opportunity to develop a relationship while a father’s presence at birth does not would appear to rest only on an overbroad sex-based generalization. A mother may not have an opportunity for a relationship if the child is removed from his or her mother on account of alleged abuse or neglect, or if the child and mother are separated by tragedy, such as disaster or war, *87of thé sort apparently present in this case. There is no reason, other than stereotype, to say that fathers who are present at birth lack an opportunity for a relationship on similar terms. The “[p]hysical differences between men and women,” Virginia, 518 U. S., at 533, therefore do not justify § 1409(a)(4)’s discrimination.

The majority later ratchets up the .interest, for the sake of argument, to “the establishment of a real, practical relationship of considerable substance between parent and child in every case, as opposed simply to ensuring the potential for the relationship to begin.” Ante, at 70. But the majority then dismisses the distinction between opportunity and reality as immaterial to the inquiry in this case. Ibid. The majority rests its analysis of the means-end fit largely on the following proposition: “It is almost axiomatic that a policy which seeks to foster the opportunity for meaningful parent-child bonds to develop has a close and substantial bearing on the governmental interest in the actual formation of that bond.” Ibid. A bare assertion of what is allegedly “almost axiomatic,” however, is no substitute for the “demanding” burden of justification borne by the defender of the classification. . Virginia, supra, at 533.

Moreover, the Court’s reasoning hardly conforms to the tailoring requirement of heightened scrutiny. The fact that a discriminatory policy embodies the good intention of “seek-ting] to foster” the opportunity for something beneficial to happen is of little relevance in itself to whether the policy substantially furthers the desired occurrence. Whether the classification indeed “has a close and substantial bearing” on the actual occurrence of the preferred result depends on facts and circumstances and must be proved by the classification’s defender. Far from being a virtual axiom, the relationship between the intent to foster an opportunity and the fruition of the desired effect is merely a contingent proposition. The majority’s sweeping claim is no surrogate *88for the careful application of heightened scrutiny to a,particular classification.

The question that then remains is the sufficiency of the fit between § 1409(a)(4)’s discriminatory means and the goal of “establishing] ... a real, practical relationship of considerable substance.” Ante, at 70. If Congress wishes to advance this end, it could easily do so by employing a sex-neutral classification that is a far “more germane bas[i]s of classification” than sex, Craig, 429 U. S., at 198. For example, Congress could require some degree of regular contact between the child and the citizen parent over a period of time. See Miller, 523 U. S., at 470 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).

The majority again raises this possibility of the use of sex-neutral means only to dismiss it as irrelevant. The Court admits that “Congress could excuse compliance with the formal requirements when an actual father-child relationship is proved,” but speculates that Congress did not do so “perhaps because of the subjectivity, intrusiveness, and difficulties of proof that might attend an inquiry into any particular bond or tie.” Ante, at 69. We have repeatedly rejected efforts to justify sex-based classifications on the ground of administrative convenience. See, e. g., Wengler, 446 U. S., at 152; Frontiero, 411 U. S., at 690-691. There is no reason to think that this is a case where administrative convenience concerns are so powerful that they would justify the sex-based discrimination, cf. Wengler, supra, at 152, especially where the use of sex as a proxy is so ill fit to the purported ends as it is here. And to the extent Congress might seek simply to ensure an “opportunity” for a relationship, little administrative inconvenience would seem to accompany a sex-neutral requirement of presence at birth, knowledge of birth, or contact between parent and child prior to a certain age.

The claim that § 1409(a)(4) substantially relates to the achievement of the goal of a “real, practical relationship” *89thus finds support not in biological differences but instead in a stereotype — i. e., “the generalization that mothers are significantly more likely than fathers ... to develop caring relationships with their children.” Miller, supra, at 482-483 (Breyer, J., dissenting). Such a claim relies on “the very stereotype the law condemns,” J E. B., 511 U. S., at 138 (internal quotation marks omitted), “lends credibility” to the generalization, Mississippi Univ. for Women, 458 U. S., at 730, and helps to convert that “assumption” into “a self-fulfilling prophecy,” ibid. See also J. E. B., supra, at 140 (“When state actors exercise peremptory challenges in reliance on gender stereotypes, they ratify and reinforce prejudicial views of the relative abilities of men and women”). Indeed, contrary to this stereotype, Boulais has reared Nguyen, while Nguyen apparently has lacked a relationship with his mother.

The majority apparently tries to avoid reliance on this stereotype by characterizing the governmental interest as a “demonstrated opportunity” for a relationship and attempting to close the gap between opportunity and reality with a dubious claim about what is “almost axiomatic.” But the fact that one route is wisely forgone does not mean that the other is plausibly taken. The inescapable conclusion instead is that § 1409(a)(4) lacks an exceedingly persuasive justification.

In denying petitioner’s claim that § 1409(a)(4) rests on stereotypes, the majority articulates a misshapen notion of “stereotype” and its significance in our equal protection jurisprudence. The majority asserts that a “stereotype” is “defined as a frame of mind resulting from irrational or uncritical analysis.” Ante, at 68. This Court has long recognized, however, that an impermissible stereotype may enjoy empirical support and thus be in a sense “rational.” See, e. g., J. E. B., supra, at 139, n. 11 (“We have made abundantly clear in past cases that gender classifications that rest on impermissible stereotypes violate the Equal Protection *90Clause, even when some statistical support can be conjured up for the generalization”); Craig, 429 U. S., at 201 (invalidating a sex-based classification even though the evidence supporting the distinction was “not trivial in a statistical sense”); id., at 202 (noting that “prior cases have consistently rejected the use of sex as a decisionmaking factor even though the statutes in question certainly rested on far more predictive empirical relationships than this”); Wiesenfeld, 420 U. S., at 645 (invalidating a sex-based classification even though the underlying generalization was “not entirely without empirical support”). Indeed, the stereotypes that underlie a sex-based classification “may hold true for many, even most, individuals.” Miller, 523 U. S., at 460 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). But in numerous cases where a measure of truth has inhered in the generalization, “the Court has rejected official actions that classify unnecessarily and overbroadly by gender when more accurate and impartial functional lines can be drawn.” Ibid.

Nor do stereotypes consist only of those overbroad generalizations that the reviewing court considers to “show disrespect” for a class, ante, at 73. Cf., e. g., Craig, supra, at 198-201. The hallmark of a stereotypical sex-based classification under this Court’s precedents is not whether the classification is insulting, but whether it' “reliefs] upon the simplistic, outdated assumption that gendér could be used as a ‘proxy for other, more germane bases of classification.’” Mississippi Univ. for Women, supra, at 726 (quoting Craig, supra, at 198).

It is also important to note that, while our explanations of many decisions invalidating sex-based classifications have pointed to the problems of “stereotypes” and “overbroad generalizations,” these explanations certainly do not mean that the burden is on the challenger of the classification to prove legislative reliance on such generalizations. Indeed, an arbitrary distinction between the sexes may rely on no identifiable generalization at all but may simply be a de*91nial of opportunity out of pure caprice. Such a distinction, of course, would nonetheless be. a classic equal protection violation. The burden of proving that use of a sex-based classification substantially relates to the achievement of an important governmental interest remains unmistakably and entirely with the classification’s defender. See, e. g., Virginia, 518 U. S., at 532-533.

C

The Court has also failed even to acknowledge the “volumes of history” to which “[t]oday’s skeptical scrutiny of official action denying rights or opportunities based on sex responds.” Id., at 531. The history of sex discrimination in laws governing the transmission of citizenship and with respect to parental responsibilities for children born out of wedlock counsels at least some circumspection in discerning legislative purposes in this context. See generally Miller, supra, at 460-468 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).

Section 1409 was first enacted as § 205 of the Nationality Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 1139-1140. The 1940 Act had been proposed by the President, forwarding a report by a specially convened Committee of Advisors, including the Attorney General. The Committee explained to Congress the rationale for § 205, whose sex-based classification remains in effect today:

“[T]he Department of State has, at least since 1912, uniformly held that an illegitimate child born abroad of an American mother acquires at birth the nationality of the mother, in the absence of legitimation or adjudication establishing the paternity of the child. This ruling is based ... on the ground that the mother in such case stands in the place of the father. . . . [U]nder American law the mother has a right to custody and control of such a child as against the putative father, and is bound to maintain it as its natural guardian. This rule seems to be in accord with the old Roman law and *92with the laws of Spain and France.” To Revise and Codify the Nationality Laws of the United States, Hearings on H. R. 6127 before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., 431 (1946) (reprinting Message from the President, Nationality Laws of the United States (1938)) (emphasis added and internal quotation marks and citations omitted).

Section 1409(a)(4) is thus paradigmatic of a historic regime that left women with responsibility, and freed men from responsibility, for nonmarital children. Under this law, as one advocate explained to Congress in a 1932 plea for a sex-neutral citizenship law, “when it comes to the illegitimate child, which is a great burden, then the mother is the only recognized parent, and the father is put safely in the background.” Naturalization and Citizenship Status of Certain Children of Mothers Who Are Citizens of the United States, Hearing on H. R. 5489 before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (testimony of Burnita Shelton Matthews); see also id;, at 5 (citizenship law “permit[s] [the father] to escape the burdens incident to illegitimate parenthood”). Unlike § 1409(a)(4), our States’ child custody and support laws no longer assume that mothers alone are “bound” to serve as “natural guardians” of nonmarital children. See, e. g., Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §25-501 (1999) (equal duties of support); cf. Cal. Civ. Code Ann. §4600 (West 1972) (abolishing “tender years” doctrine). The majority, however, rather than confronting the stereotypical notion that mothers must care for these children and fathers may ignore them, quietly condones the “very stereotype the law condemns,” J. E. B., 511 U. S., at 138 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Punctuating the disparity between the majority’s and the INS’ accounts of the governmental interests at stake is the majority’s failure even to address the INS’ second asserted rationale: that §1409 prevents certain children from being stateless. Brief for Respondent 11; see also id., at 17-18 *93(describing statelessness problem). The Court certainly has good reason to reject this asserted rationale. Indeed, the INS hardly even attempts to show how the statelessness concern justifies the discriminatory means of § 1409(a)(4) in particular. The INS instead undertakes a demonstration of how the statelessness concern justifies § 1409(c)’s relaxed residency requirements for citizen mothers. See id., at 17-19, 42-43, 44, n. 23. But petitioners do not challenge here the distinction between § 1401(g), which requires that citizen fathers have previously resided in the United States for five years, including at least two years after the age of 14, and § 1409(c), which provides that a citizen mother need only have resided in the United States for one year. The INS’ proffered justification of statelessness thus does nothing to buttress the case for § 1409(a)(4).

The Court also makes a number of observations that tend, on the whole, to detract and distract from the relevant equal protection inquiry. For example, presumably referring to §1409 in general, the majority suggests that “the statute simply ensures equivalence between two expectant mothers who are citizens abroad if one chooses to reenter for the child’s birth and the other chooses not to return, or does not have the means to do so.” Ante, at 61. But even apart from the question whether this was one of Congress’ actual purposes (and the majority does not affirmatively claim that it was), this equivalence is quite beside the point of petitioners’ constitutional challenge, which is directed at the dissimilar treatment accorded to fathers and mothers.

The Court also states that the obligation imposed by § 1409(a)(4) is “minimal” and does not present “inordinate and unnecessary hurdles” to the acquisition of citizenship by the nonmarital child of a citizen father. Ante, at 70. Even assuming that the burden is minimal (and the question whether the hurdle is “unnecessary” is quite different in kind from the question whether it is burdensome), it is well settled that “the ‘absence of an insurmountable barrier’ will not *94redeem an otherwise unconstitutionally discriminatory law.” Kirckberg, 450 U. S., at 461 (quoting Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U. S. 762, 774 (1977)).

Finally, while the recitation of statistics concerning military personnel and overseas travel, ante, at 65-66, highlights the opportunities for United States citizens to interact with citizens of foreign countries, it bears little on the question whether § 1409(a)(4)’s discriminatory means are a permissible governmental response to those circumstances. Indeed, the majority’s discussion may itself simply reflect the stereotype of male irresponsibility that is no more a basis for the validity of the classification than are stereotypes about the “traditional” behavior patterns of women.

It is, of course, true that the failure to recognize relevant differences is out of line with the command of equal protection. See ante, at 73. But so too do we undermine the promise of equal protection when we try to make our differences carry weight they simply cannot bear. This promise informs the proper application of heightened scrutiny to sex-based classifications and demands our scrupulous adherence to that test.

Ill

The Court identifies two “additional obstacles” that petitioners would face even were the Court to accept the conclusion that the statute fails heightened scrutiny. Ante, at 71. The first question concerns “‘potential problems with fashioning a remedy.’” Ante, at 72 (quoting Miller, 523 U. S., at 451 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (citing id., at 452-459 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment))). The second question concerns “the implications of statements in our earlier cases regarding the wide deference afforded to Congress in the exercise of its immigration and naturalization power.” Ante, at 72-73. I believe that petitioners are able to surmount both of these hurdles.

As to the matter of remedy, severance of § 1409(a)(4) would have been appropriate had petitioners prevailed. Several *95factors support this conclusion. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) contains a general severability clause, which provides: “If any particular provision of this Act, or the application thereof to any person or circumstancé, is held invalid, the remainder of the Act and the application of such provision to other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.” §406, 66 Stat. 281; see note following 8 U. S. C. § 1101, p. 38, “Separability.” We have concluded that this severability clause “is unambiguous and gives rise to a presumption that Congress did not intend the validity of the [INA] as a whole, or any part of the [INA], to depend upon whether” any one provision was unconstitutional. INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 932 (1983).

Title 8 U. S. C. § 1421(d), which states that “[a] person may only be naturalized as a citizen of the United States in the manner and under the conditions prescribed in this sub-chapter and not otherwise,” has no effect on the operation of the INA’s general severability clause in this case. Section 1421(d) governs only naturalization, which the statute defines as “the conferring of nationality of a state upon a person after birth,” § 1101(a)(23), whereas §§ 1401(g) and 1409 deal with the transmission of citizenship at birth, see § 1401 (“The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth . . .”). Further, unlike the INA’s general severability clause, § 1421(d) does not specifically address the scenario where a particular provision is held'invalid. Indeed, the INS does not even rely on § 1421(d) in its brief.

Nor does our decision in INS v. Pangilinan, 486 U. S. 875 (1988), preclude severance here. In Pangilinan, this Court held that courts lack equitable authority to order the naturalization of persons who did not satisfy the statutory requirements for naturalization. Id., at 883-885. Petitioners in the instant case, however, seek the exercise of no such equitable power. Petitioners instead seek severance of the offending provisions so that the statute, free of its constitutional defect, can operate to determine whether citizen*96ship was transmitted at birth. Cf. Miller, supra, at 488-489 (Breyer, J., dissenting).

In addition to the severance clause, this Court has often concluded that, in the absence of legislative direction not to sever the infirm provision, “extension, rather than nullification,” of a benefit is more faithful to the legislative design. Califano v. Westcott, 443 U. S. 76, 89-90 (1979); see also Weinberger v.. Wiesenfeld, 420 U. S. 636 (1975); Frontiero, 411 U. S., at 691, n. 25. The choice of extension over nullification also would have the virtue of avoiding injury to parties who are not represented in the instant litigation. And Congress, of eourse, remains free to redesign the statute in a manner that comports with the Constitution.

As to the question of deference, the pivotal case is Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U. S. 787 (1977). Fiallo, however, is readily distinguished. Fiallo involved constitutional challenges to various statutory distinctions, including a classification based on the sex of a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident, that determined the availability of a special immigration preference to certain aliens by virtue of their relationship with the citizen or lawful permanent resident. Id., at 788-792; see also Miller, supra, at 429 (opinion of Stevens, J.). The Court, emphasizing “the limited scope of judicial inquiry into immigration legislation,” 430 U. S., at 792, rejected the constitutional challenges. The Court noted its repeated prior emphasis that “‘over no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete than it is over’ the admission of aliens.” Ibid, (quoting Oceanic Steam Nav. Co. v. Stranakan, 214 U. S. 320, 339 (1909)).

The instant ease is not about the admission of aliens but instead concerns the logically prior question whether an individual is a citizen in the first place. A predicate for application of the deference commanded by Fiallo is that the individuals concerned be aliens. But whether that predicate obtains is the very matter at issue in this ease. Cf. Miller, *97523 U. S., at 433, n. 10 (opinion of Stevens, J.) (“[T]he Government now argues . .. that an alien outside the territory of the United States has no substantive rights cognizable under the Fifth Amendment. Even if that is so, the question to be decided is whether petitioner is such an alien or whether, as [petitioner] claims, [petitioner] is a citizen. Thus, we must address the merits to determine whether the predicate for this argument is accurate” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). Because §§ 1401 and 1409 govern the conferral of citizenship at birth, and not the admission of aliens, the ordinary standards of equal protection review apply. See id., at 480-481 (Breyer, J., dissenting).

* * *

No one should mistake the majority’s analysis for a. careful application of this Court’s equal protection jurisprudence concerning sex-based classifications. Today’s decision instead represents a deviation from a line of cases in which we have vigilantly applied heightened scrutiny to such classifications to determine whether a constitutional violation has occurred. I trust that the depth and vitality of these precedents will ensure that today’s error remains an aberration. I respectfully dissent.

OPINION

ROGERS, Circuit Judge.

Heck Van Tran, a Tennessee prisoner under sentence of death, appeals the district court’s judgment denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Van Tran raised twenty-six claims in his original habeas petition. The district court and this court have certified three claims for this appeal: (1) whether Van Tran is intellectually disabled and his execution would therefore violate the Eighth Amendment under Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002);1 (2) whether, as applied to Van Tran’s crime, the “heinous, atrocious, or cruel” aggravating circumstance of the capital jury instruction violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments; and (3) whether Van Tran’s penalty phase counsel was ineffective, thereby violating the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court committed no error in denying the writ of habeas corpus on the second and third claims. With respect to the first claim, however, because the Tennessee state court’s decision did not apply the proper legal standard for assessing whether Van Tran has intellectual disability, which was announced in a recent decision of the Tennessee Supreme Court, the district court’s judgment must be vacated and remanded. In accordance with the Supreme Court’s command that the procedural scheme for enforcing Atkins is within the state’s purview and because the State is faced with a state law — imposed procedural burden it could not have anticipated at the time of the original state-court Atkins hearing, we remand for the entry of a conditional writ of habeas corpus to allow the state courts to consider Van Tran’s Atkins claim under the proper, now-governing standard.

*598I.

Heck Van Tran was born in 1966 in Vietnam, during the Vietnam War, the son of a Vietnamese woman and an American serviceman. Van Tran’s father died two years after his birth. Van Tran and his mother lived in poverty, and as a young child Van Tran suffered severe social deprivation and inadequate support. He began speaking at a late age, although even after beginning to speak he had difficulty articulating words and spoke infrequently and in short phrases. He and his mother were relocated to Memphis by a charitable organization in 1983. He attended one year of school in the United States, during which he had good attendance but got poor grades. He dropped out in 1984.

In October 1987, Van Tran and three accomplices participated in an armed robbery of the Jade East Restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee, where Van Tran had been employed and from which he had been fired a month or two before. During the robbery, three people were killed. A fourth, a seventy-five-year-old woman, was beaten and knocked unconscious. The victims were all related and worked in the restaurant together. The robbers obtained a few jewelry cases from the restaurant’s back office, and two diamond rings, a necklace, and a watch that were taken from the survivor’s person. A detailed summary of the incident, including the ensuing interstate manhunt, is found in the Tennessee Supreme Court’s statement of the facts at State v. Van Tran, 864 S.W.2d 465, 468-70 (Tenn.1993). For the purposes of this appeal, it suffices to summarize a few additional facts.

During the robbery, Van Tran twice shot Kai Yin Chuey, a slight, seventy-four-year-old woman. The first time he shot her through her windpipe, although he claims that this was an accident. A few moments later, he placed the gun directly against the back of her skull and shot her again, killing her instantly. During the robbery, two others were killed. Van Tran shot one of them in the face; his accomplices shot the other while Van Tran collected the loot.

Six months later, Van Tran was arrested in Houston, where he confessed that he participated in the robbery. After trial, Van Tran was convicted of three counts of felony murder; he was sentenced to death for each count on the basis of two aggravating circumstances, one of which was that the murder was found to be “especially cruel in that it involved depravity of mind.” Id. at 470.2 On direct appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed Van Tran’s convictions on the three counts of felony murder, but reversed his sentence of death for two of the three murders, affirming the death sentence only for the murder of Kai Yin Chuey. Id. at 482. In arriving'at this decision, the state supreme court disapproved of the deletion of the words “heinous” and “atrocious” from the aggravating circumstance instruction. However, the court ultimately affirmed on the grounds that the curtailed instruction did not likely confuse the jurors, that the jury still made the dispositive “depravity of mind” finding, and relatedly, that the failure to include those terms in the instruction had no effect on the result. Id. at 479.

In addition, the Tennessee Supreme Court independently determined that there was sufficient evidence presented at *599trial to find that the killing of Kai Yin Chuey evinced “depravity of mind.” Id. at 480. In making this determination, the court summarized the murder in the following manner:

In [Kai Yin Chuey’s] case we have a helpless 74-year-old woman, who had already been shot by the Defendant and was lying on the floor unable to protect herself when the Defendant put a gun to the back of her head and shot her a second time. We find the evidence of this brutal and senseless execution of a helpless old woman sufficient to support this aggravating circumstance in the murder of Kai Yin Chuey.

Id.

Van Tran filed a state postconviction petition in March 1995, claiming, among other things, that he received ineffective assistance of counsel and that he should not be executed because he is mentally retarded and incompetent. After being denied relief in the postconviction trial court, Van Tran appealed to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA), where the trial court’s judgment was affirmed. Van Tran v. State, No. 02C01-9803-CR-00078, 1999 WL 177560, at *13 (Tenn.Ct. CrimApp. Apr. 1, 1999). Regarding Van Tran’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel for failure to investigate and present additional mitigating evidence during the penalty phase, the appellate court found that trial counsel conducted a proper investigation and that there was no prejudice. Id. at *11-12. As to whether Van Tran’s execution was prohibited by state statute because of his mental retardation, the appeals court deferred to the postcon-viction trial court’s finding that Van Tran’s I.Q. was above 70, which was based upon the State’s expert’s testimony that Van Tran’s expert had misread the manual related to I.Q. calculation and had arrived at an erroneously low figure. Id. at *6.

With respect to only the issue of whether Van Tran’s execution was prohibited because of mental retardation, Van Tran’s petition eventually reached the Tennessee Supreme Court, which took up the case “in order to clarify the procedure by which a prisoner who has been sentenced to death may raise the issue of present mental competency to be executed.” Van Tran v. State, 6 S.W.3d 257, 260 (Tenn.1999). The court denied Van Tran’s request for relief primarily on the ground that the issue of his competency for the purposes of execution was not ripe for resolution, because the execution was not imminent. Id. at 274. Van Tran filed a motion to reopen his postconviction petition in February 2000, alleging that new evidence established that he was mentally retarded and was therefore ineligible for the death penalty under state law. When this petition reached the Tennessee Supreme Court, that court announced as an issue of first impression that execution of mentally retarded persons was prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 16 of the Tennessee Constitution. Van Tran v. State, 66 S.W.3d 790, 809 (Tenn.2001). The state supreme court remanded to the postcon-viction trial court for a hearing on the issue of whether Van Tran qualified as mentally retarded. Id. at 812. Furthermore, the court held that mental retardation, for the purposes of the state and federal constitutions, was defined by the Tennessee Code. The code defined mental retardation, for the purposes of prohibiting the execution of those with mental retardation, according to the following three necessary criteria: “(1) significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning as evidenced by a functional intelligence quotient (I.Q.) of seventy (70) or below; (2) deficits in adaptive behavior; and (3) mental retardation manifested during the developmental period, or by eighteen (18) *600years of age.” Id. (citing Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-13-203 (1997)). Within a year, the United States Supreme Court would similarly hold that the execution of persons with mental retardation violates the United States Constitution. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 321, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002).3

On remand, the postconviction trial court held a trial to determine whether Van Tran was mentally retarded as defined by § 39-13-203 of the Tennessee Code. At the trial, two psychologists testified that Van Tran is mentally retarded under the statute’s definition. Van Tran v. State, 2006 WL 3327828, at *2-13 (Tenn. Ct.Crim.App. Nov. 9, 2006). Both doctors based their conclusions on tests personally administered to Van Tran, his institutional records, and interviews with him, his mother, and others who knew him. In addition to finding that Van Tran currently has an I.Q. of seventy or below and suffers from numerous deficits in adaptive behavior,4 both experts concluded that Van Tran’s deficits manifested themselves during the developmental period, before Van Tran was eighteen years old. Dr. Daniel Grant based this conclusion on a social history that discussed Van Tran’s late language skills, his difficulties in school, and his lack of success in living independently. Id. at *5. Dr. Pamela Auble based her conclusion that Van Tran’s impairments appeared during the developmental period on numerous risk factors provided in the tenth edition of the American Association on Mental Retardation’s reference manual, including a traumatic brain injury during youth, malnutrition, poverty, lack of social resources, and prenatal maternal smoking. Id. at *11; see also American Association on Mental Retardation, Mental Retardation: Definition, Classification, and Systems of Supports 127 tbl. 8.1 (10th ed. 2002) (“AAMR 10th ”).

The State presented no testimony to contradict the findings of Van Tran’s experts, although it did test Van Tran’s experts with some cross-examination.

The postconviction trial court denied Van Tran’s request for relief, finding that he had not demonstrated mental retardation under the Tennessee statute by a preponderance of the evidence. Van Tran, 2006 WL 3327828, at *15. Although the court found that Van Tran satisfied the first prong by proving that he has a functional I.Q. of seventy or below, the court determined that Van Tran had failed to meet his burden of proof for the second and third prongs. With respect to the second prong, the existence of deficits in adaptive behavior, the court found that Van Tran had demonstrated an adaptive deficit in only one area, that of communication. The court weighed the experts’ testi*601mony against evidence that Van Tran had held a few jobs and had occasionally cooked for and eared for others. The court held that, in light of the evidence of Van Tran’s at least somewhat successful social and individual functioning, he had not demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that he suffered adaptive deficits in the areas of self-direction, social interpersonal skills, personal health and safety, or functional academies. Id. at *16. Because the court found that Van Tran suffered from a deficit in only one area of adaptive functioning, it concluded that Van Tran did not meet the second prong. Regarding the third prong, the trial court found that Van Tran had not presented sufficient evidence demonstrating the manifestation of deficits before the age of eighteen. The court noted that no test of intellectual functioning was administered prior to Van Tran’s incarceration and that neither testifying expert “could offer any real proof to establish that the deficits occurred prior to the age of eighteen.” Id. at *17. The court also noted that Van Tran’s current deficits, rather than being caused by neurological deficit, could have been caused by neglect or paranoid schizophrenia, which had not been diagnosed for many years. Id.

On appeal, the TCCA affirmed the trial court’s denial of Van Tran’s request for relief. Id. at *27. The appellate court agreed with the trial court that some of the adaptive functioning tests used by Van Tran’s experts were untrustworthy because they relied on interviews with people that either had not observed Van Tran frequently or had not observed him in a non-institutionalized setting. Id. at *23. The appellate court emphasized Van Tran’s unique position, suggesting that Van Tran’s limited education, history of drug and alcohol use, schizophrenia, and lack of ordinary life experiences all negatively impacted the effectiveness of the living skills tests that were used by the experts:

We agree with the trial court’s assessment that the Petitioner is in a unique position. The Petitioner was born in Vietnam. There is no question that the Petitioner’s childhood was atypical. His social history reveals abuse, neglect, and social ostracism. He essentially “lived on the streets” until age seventeen when he came to this country through the assistance of Catholic Charities. The Petitioner’s formal schooling was limited to several years in Vietnam and about one year in this country. The Petitioner has spent the majority of his time in this country incarcerated. While the Petitioner’s experts maintained that the Petitioner was more proficient in the English language than in Vietnamese, proof at the Petitioner’s original post-conviction hearing indicated that the Petitioner had difficulty communicating with trial counsel until a Vietnamese interpreter was appointed. A social worker with Catholic Charities testified that the Petitioner spoke and understood the Vietnamese language. The Petitioner has a history of drug and alcohol use. The Petitioner has also been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The proof also corroborates the trial court’s conclusion that the Petitioner was in a position unique to most American adults. Dr. Grant conceded that the Petitioner had probably-never “filled out a check, or a money order.” Moreover, there is no indication that the testing questions took into account the Petitioner’s lifestyle in Vietnam or that he has spent the majority of his adult life incarcerated. Accordingly, we agree with the trial court’s assessment that little weight should be given to the Petitioner’s below average score on the Independent Living Scale.

Id. at *24, The court also found:

The circumstances of the Petitioner’s crime belie any assertion that the Peti*602tioner suffered from any deficit in intellectual ability or adaptive skills. The Petitioner had previously been employed by the victims of his crime. He knew the layout of the restaurant and knew that jewelry was kept on the premises. The Petitioner did the talking with one of the victims at the onset of the crime. The Petitioner was the person that went into the office to collect the jewelry. After the crime, the Petitioner escaped with two of his co-defendants to Houston, Texas, where it was the Petitioner who arranged to sell the jewelry to a Vietnamese man for $4,000. It was also the Petitioner who paid this man from the proceeds and divided the money with his two co-defendants.

Id. at *25. Finally, the appellate court determined that Van Tran had not demonstrated that his intellectual deficits manifested themselves prior to his reaching the age of eighteen:

The Petitioner had not been administered any test of intellectual functioning prior to reaching the age of eighteen, and no testing was performed until ten years after his incarceration. The only proof establishing this third prong [was] reliance upon social factors present in the Petitioner’s childhood, including extreme poverty and child abuse. In this regard, we cannot conclude that the trial court’s conclusion that the Petitioner’s late development could have been the result of “neglect” rather than neurological deficit was in error or contrary to the evidence. The evidence of poverty, child abuse, lack of education, family dysfunction and poor social conditions are not enough to demonstrate that any deficits manifested during the developmental period. The proof established that the Petitioner supported himself, took care of others, and was employed. The proof also established that the Petitioner, with the aid of an interpreter, was able to assist and communicate with his trial attorneys. The occurrences of these abilities all occurred after the age of eighteen. Moreover, we conclude that the fact that the Petitioner admits to alcohol and drug abuse and the fact that he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia may have impaired his brain functioning. Finally, Dr. Auble’s litany of potential “risk factors” fail to provide sufficient facts to support the conclusion that any impairments were revealed during the developmental period. Accordingly, Petitioner cannot satisfy the third prong of the test for mental retardation.

Id. at *26.

Tran originally filed his federal habeas petition in May 2000. In May 2001, the district court entered an order holding the petition in abeyance while Van Tran exhausted his state-court remedies. Tran v. Bell, 145 F.Supp.2d 939 (W.D.Tenn.2001). The district court took the case out of abeyance in April 2007, after which Tran filed an amended petition raising twenty-six claims in December 2007.

On September 30, 2010, the district court denied Van Tran’s petition in its entirety. Order, Van Tran v. Bell, No. 00-2451-SMH, at 140 CW.D.Tenn. Sept. 30, 2010) (“District Court Order”). Regarding Van Tran’s Atkins claim, the district court first held that the state court’s determination that Van Tran was not limited in functional academics was an unreasonable determination of the facts based on the evidence presented in the state court. Id. at 64. This determination meant that Van Tran met his burden for the second prong, because the state court had already found that he had a deficit in one other area, that of communication. However, the district court went on to find that the state court was reasonable in its determinations that *603Van Tran did not suffer from deficits in the areas of self-direction and social/interpersonal skills, on the ground that the state court was able to base its conclusion on record evidence that contradicted the experts’ testimony about Van Tran’s gullibility, lack of personal responsibility, and mental rigidity. Id. at 66-68.

Despite finding that the state court was not reasonable in finding that Van Tran did not suffer from deficits in adaptive behavior, the district court found reasonable the state court’s ultimate finding that Van Tran had not sufficiently demonstrated mental retardation, based solely upon Van Tran’s failure to meet the third prong. In particular, the district court held that the state postconviction appellate court’s finding, namely that Van Tran did not sufficiently demonstrate that his intellectual deficits manifested themselves in the developmental stage, was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of federal law, and was not based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented. Id. at 75. The district court reasoned that “[a]n expert’s testimony that an individual is ‘at risk’ of mental retardation because of congenital factors, poverty, and abuse is not enough to support an Atkins claim.” Id. at 74 (citing In re Mathis, 488 F.3d 395, 398-99 (5th Cir.2007)). The court also reasoned that a lack of evidence does not entitle a petitioner to relief. Id. The district court went on to support the state court’s finding:

In the instant case, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals’ determination was not based solely oh the fact of Van Tran’s schizophrenia, but also on the lack of evidence available about Van Tran’s early development. The court noted Van Tran’s abilities in contrast to his stated deficits and the possible effects of drug abuse and mental illness on his cognitive abilities. Despite some possibility that Van Tran suffered significant adaptive deficits before age 18, the court’s determination that he failed to meet his burden is neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of clearly established precedent, or based on an unreasonable determination of facts in light of the evidence presented. Van Tran has not satisfied the requirements to prove mental retardation and obtain habeas relief for his Atkins claims.

Id. at 75.

Next, the district court held that the state supreme court’s narrowing construction of the aggravating circumstance was constitutional, because it provided specific and detailed guidance rendering the capital process susceptible to rational review. Id. at 96-97. The court also held that the state supreme court’s determination that there was sufficient evidence to find that the facts of Van Tran’s crime evinced “depravity of mind” was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law and was based on a reasonable determination of the facts. Id. at 98. Regarding the ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, the district court held that the state appellate court did not apply the Strickland test unreasonably and did not rely on an unreasonable determination of the facts; the court noted that the evidence that could have been presented at trial was not significantly different from what was actually presented. Id. at 103-04.

The district court granted Van Tran a certificate of appealability with respect to claim (2), that he has mental retardation, and claim (4), that the “depravity of mind” aggravating circumstance was unconstitutionally vague as applied. Id. at 140-42. Van Tran moved this court to expand the scope of this appeal, and we subsequently certified claim (7), that Van Tran received *604ineffective assistance of trial counsel during the penalty phase because his counsel failed to properly investigate and present all available mitigating evidence.

II.

A. Standard of Review and Governing Law

The merits of Van Tran’s habeas claims are governed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), under which a writ of habeas corpus may not be granted unless the state court’s adjudication of the claim “(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or (2)resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d); see also Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370, 130 S.Ct. 2250, 2259, 176 L.Ed.2d 1098 (2010).

Under the “contrary to” clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Supreme Court on a question of law, or if the state court decides a case differently than the Supreme Court on a set of materially indistinguishable facts. Brown v. Payton, 544 U.S. 133, 141, 125 S.Ct. 1432, 161 L.Ed.2d 334 (2005); Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412-13, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). To obtain habeas relief, “a state prisoner must show that the state court’s ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 131 S.Ct. 770, 786-87, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011).

State court determinations of fact are presumed to be correct, and the petitioner bears the burden of rebutting this presumption of correctness by clear and convincing evidence. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). Our review under § 2254(d)(1) is limited to the record that was before the state court. Cullen v. Pin-holster, — U.S. -, 131 S.Ct. 1388, 1398, 179 L.Ed.2d 557 (2011).

B. Atkins Claim

The Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit the execution of intellectually disabled persons. Hall v. Florida, — U.S. -, 134 S.Ct. 1986, 1990, 188 L.Ed.2d 1007 (2014); Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 321, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002). The Supreme Court left to the individual states “the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction.” Atkins, 536 U.S. at 317, 122 S.Ct. 2242. Accordingly, the Atkins Court “did not provide definitive procedural or substantive guides” for enforcing the Atkins protection. Bobby v. Bies, 556 U.S. 825, 831, 129 S.Ct. 2145, 173 L.Ed.2d 1173 (2009). The Court recently elucidated this vague command:

[T]he States play a critical role in advancing protections and providing the [courts] with information that contributes to an understanding of how intellectual disability should be measured and assessed. But Atkins did not give the States unfettered discretion to define the full scope of the constitutional protection.

Hall, 134 S.Ct. at 1998, 134 S.Ct. 1986. Thus, the Tennessee legislature and courts have discretion, within reason, to determine the procedures by which the Tennessee courts will ensure that persons with intellectual disability are not executed in *605violation of the Eighth Amendment. The Tennessee legislature and courts also have discretion to define intellectual disability substantively for the purposes of Atkins, but this latter discretion is limited.

Tennessee, in accordance with longstanding clinical practice, has adopted the standard definition of intellectual disability with the following three elements: “(1) Significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning as evidenced by a functional intelligence quotient (I.Q.) of seventy (70) or below; (2) Deficits in adaptive behavior; and (3) The intellectual disability must have been manifested during the developmental period, or by eighteen (18) years of age.” State v. Pruitt, 415 S.W.3d 180, 202 (Tenn.2013) (quoting Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-13-203(a)); see also Hall, 134 S.Ct. at 2003.

The first prong of the definition of intellectual disability is not at issue, which the State concedes. The second prong was met under the reasoning of the district court, which we uphold on de novo review. Although the state court found that Van Tran had failed to meet the third prong, this was contrary to or an unreasonable application of federal law in light of intervening Tennessee law in Coleman v. State, 341 S.W.3d 221 (Tenn.2011), in which the Tennessee Supreme Court explicated the role of expert testimony in a court’s consideration of Atkins claims. Under Coleman ’s guidance, Van Tran should be granted a conditional writ of habeas corpus in order to allow the state postconviction court to reconsider Van Tran’s Atkins claim under the now-governing legal standard.

First Prong: Intelligence Quotient

With regard to the first prong, the TCCA held that Van Tran had satisfied the first prong of the test because he had proved by a preponderance of the evidence that he had a functional I.Q. of 70 or below. Van Tran, 2006 WL 3327828, at *20 (Tenn.Ct.Crim.App. Nov. 9, 2006). The parties do not contest this issue on appeal.

Second Prong: Adaptive Deficits

With regard to the second prong, although the issue is close, the district court correctly found that the state court unreasonably applied the facts in arriving at the conclusion that Van Tran demonstrated only one adaptive deficit. Overall, the TCCA reasoned in a holistic way that departed unreasonably from the reliable expert analyses used by Van Tran’s experts, which were in accordance with the professionally accepted definitions provided by the statute and the clinical best practices endorsed by the Tennessee Supreme Court. The reliable and professionally vetted methods presented by Van Tran’s experts, from which the legal standards draw their substance, must guide the court’s inquiry. The postconviction trial and appellate courts’ ad hoc, ostensibly commonsense reasoning, by itself, is not sufficient to reject the experts’ conclusions that Van Tran has more than one adaptive deficit.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has stated generally that “deficits in adaptive behavior ‘mean[s] the inability of an individual to behave so as to adapt to the surrounding circumstances.’ ” Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 248 (quoting State v. Smith, 893 S.W.2d 908, 918 (Tenn.1994)). In order to demonstrate deficits in adaptive behavior sufficient to satisfy the second prong of the intellectual disability test, Tennessee courts typically require the defendant to demonstrate “significant limitations” in two of the following skill areas: “communication, self-care, home living, social/interpersonal skills, use of community resources, self-direction, functional academic skills, work, leisure, health, and safety.” See Van Tran v. State, 66 *606S.W.3d 790, 795 (Tenn.2001) (citing American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 39 (4th ed. 1994) (‘DSM-TV”)). This approach, as clearly set out in the Van Tran opinion of 2001 and borrowed from the DSM-TV (and its revision, the DSM-TV-TR), was cited with approval by the state supreme court in the recent Coleman opinion. Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 248-49; see also American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 49 (4th rev. ed.2000) (maintaining two-out-of-ten-area framework). Similarly, in Howell v. State, the state supreme court intimated approval of the two-or-more-deficits approach by stating that “the most widely recognized definitions of mental retardation include two basic characteristics: significantly subaverage intellectual functioning accompanied by related limitations in two or more adaptive skill areas (such as self-care, communication, or social skills), and manifestation of the condition before age 18.” 151 S.W.3d 450, 457 (Tenn.2004) (emphasis added). Most importantly, the state postconviction courts below appeared to use this framework in analyzing Van Tran’s adaptive deficits. For these reasons, although other frameworks could be used,5 it is most appropriate in this case to adhere to the two-out-of-ten framework on habeas review of the state court’s decision.

As an initial matter, it is uncontested that Van Tran suffers from deficits in communication, one of the ten areas of adaptive behavior. In order to satisfy the second prong, therefore, Van Tran had to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that he suffers from a deficit in at least one of the other areas. Because we conclude, like the district court below, that it was not reasonable for the Tennessee courts to find no adaptive deficit with respect to functional academics, we need not address the remaining eight factors.

The district court correctly determined that the TCCA’s “determination that Van Tran was not limited in functional academics, especially considering the court’s finding that he had deficits in reading proficiency and language skills, was an unreasonable determination of fact based on the evidence presented.” District Court Order at 64. The State’s brief on this appeal devotes little more than a page to refuting this conclusion. Appellee’s Br. at 53-54. The evidence presented in the record demonstrates that Van Tran had significant deficits in the area of functional academics. The state trial court, in an analysis adopted by the TCCA, reasoned as follows in rejecting the functional academics adaptive deficit:

*607Finally, the court further disagrees with the assessment that petitioner suffers deficits in the area of functional academics. The court does not disagree that the petitioner has deficits in the area of reading proficiency and language skills, but finds petitioner’s deficits are more in the area of communication than functional academics. Petitioner only attended school in the United States for one year, and attended school in Vietnam sporadically for a total of only two years. To the court’s knowledge, no records exist from the school(s) in Vietnam. Moreover, on the one test designed to determine petitioner’s functional academic level, petitioner’s score was not below average. Dr. Grant testified that he administered the Kaufman Functional Academic Skills Test and petitioner’s functional ácademic score was 79. In looking at the individual parts of the test, petitioner’s math score was much higher than his reading score. Other testing seemed to indicate the same pattern. Despite the fact that these tests may indicate some academic deficit in the area of reading, this court finds it is unable to say such results indicate an overall deficit in the area of functional academics. This is especially true in light of the court’s conclusion that petitioner does have deficits in communication and Dr. Grant’s testimony that all of the tests were given in English without the aid of an interpreter. While[] Dr. Grant maintains the petitioner’s English skills are better than his Vietnamese, this court finds this fact significant in evaluating the weight to be given to Dr. Grant’s conclusions. Given the fact that the petitioner’s functional academic score was 79; the fact that the petitioner may have had difficulty understanding the testing due to the language barrier; the fact that petitioner has a very limited formal education; and the fact that the only areas where petitioner showed deficiencies were in the areas involving language skills, this court finds the evidence does not establish deficits in the area of functional academics.

This discounting of expert testimony was based on the trial court’s refusal to accept the expert conclusions of Van Tran’s witnesses, in light of the district court’s disagreement with the expert opinions as to what the tests indicated and how the test results were affected by the fact that English was Van Tran’s second language. These conclusions, while perhaps reasonable in appearance to a layperson, are in the context of this case too unsupported by the record to be upheld as reasonable. The State presented no testimony to contradict the conclusions of Van Tran’s experts, all of whom agreed that he suffered significant deficits in functional academics.

Dr. Adler, a nationally certified school psychologist, testified that Van Tran was “functionally illiterate” and could not, for example, comprehend a newspaper article written at a sixth-grade level. Dr. Grant, a board-certified forensic examiner and neuropsychologist, administered the Kaufman Academic' Skills Test, on which Van Tran scored an arithmetic standard score of 93, a reading standard store of 66, and a functional academic score of 79. Dr. Grant emphasized that the fact that Van Tran does not suffer a “significant deficit” in arithmetic did not change his conclusions, noting that “retarded individuals are just like the rest of us, they have strengths and they have weaknesses.” Dr. Grant testified that Van Tran was reading at a fourth-grade level, and that it was important to note that he continued to read at a fourth-grade level even after eight or nine years of instruction in a G.E.D. program. Similarly, Dr. Auble concluded, based on *608Van Tran’s plateauing at a fourth grade-level reading skill, that Van Tran demonstrates an adaptive- deficit in functional academics, noting that “he really has not progressed much in terms of his functional academics despite many, many[ ] years of schooling.”

The expert testimony explicitly refuted the concern that the tests were affected by the fact that the tests were conducted in English, Van Tran’s non-native language. Dr. Grant explained in his testimony why he decided to conduct his tests on Van Tran in the English language even though Van Tran’s native tongue is Vietnamese. Dr. Grant testified that Van Tran is seriously deficient in Vietnamese and that he performed no better than a child in effectively communicating in Vietnamese. Dr. Grant also noted that his colleague Dr. Wasserman, a bilingual psychologist, had determined that Van Tran’s proficiency in English exceeded his proficiency in Vietnamese and that he would score higher on tests in English than in Vietnamese. A bilingual correctional officer also confirmed that Van Tran’s proficiency in Vietnamese is “very low.” The State presented no evidence contradicting the expert evidence that Van Tran was more proficient in English than Vietnamese.

Because the State presented no evidence to support the theory that Van Tran’s tests administered in English were unreliable because they were not given in his native language, the state court unreasonably discredited the testimony of the psychologists who administered Van Tran’s tests in English. Given that there are various considerations in the choice of which language to use, and that the diagnostic tests were administered and interpreted by a member of the professional group that designs and frequently applies the tests, the choice of the language in which to administer the test is reasonably within the clinical discretion of the professional administering the test. Without a contradictory analysis by another member of the profession, a court is in no position to question the professional judgment used in decisions associated with the administration of a clinical diagnostic test. This conclusion finds some support in an Atkins case from the Fifth Circuit. In Rivera v. Quarterman, the Fifth Circuit considered the State of Texas’s argument that the intelligence tests administered to a bilingual capital defendant should have been adjusted upward to compensate for his bilingualism. 505 F.Sd 349, 361 (5th Cir.2007). The psychiatrist who had administered the test testified that she spoke with the defendant before administering the test and had no trouble communicating with him in English. Id. In addition, other witnesses testified that they conversed with the defendant in English and without communication difficulties. Id. However, the State presented the testimony of an expert who explained that the defendant’s bilingualism negatively impacted his verbal acuity and thereby artificially decreased the results of the I.Q. test administered by the defendant’s expert. Id. The Fifth Circuit rejected the State’s argument that the district court erred by crediting the testimony of the psychiatrist who administered the test, largely because, as Texas’s own expert witness acknowledged on the stand, the ultimate decision of which language in which to administer the intelligence tests is a clinical judgment that must be made with the clinician’s professional judgment. Id. at 362. In the present case, the State’s argument that the tests were unreliable is even less plausible, because the State relied neither on a general theory about bilingualism nor on any expert testimony presented.

Notwithstanding the TCCA’s general failure to adhere to the clinical framework, the sophistication of the crime and Van Tran’s role in it are mostly irrelevant to *609the very narrow, clinically defined question of whether Van Tran suffers a deficit in the area of functional academics. In Hooks v. State, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals held that evidence that the defendant ran a prostitution ring was admissible at an Atkins hearing, because a crime that involved a continuing criminal enterprise “requires a level of abstract thought, coupled with the ability to carry out plans, which might be beyond the capabilities of a mentally retarded person.” 126 P.3d 686, 644 (Okla.Ct.Crim.App.2005). By contrast, the court noted that “individual acts of violent crime, such as armed robbery or rape, require little or no abstract thought or complex planning.” Id. Van Tran’s murder is of the latter kind; it was impulsive, committed in the heat of a tense moment during an armed robbery performed with accomplices. Fleeing the jurisdiction with his accomplice does not indicate forethought or planning, but rather an impulsive response to an armed robbery gone awry. Selling the stolen goods is a fairly basic response to the desperate situation in which Van Tran and his accomplice surely found themselves. None of these actions is so sophisticated or elaborate that the intellectually disabled could not have performed it.

Furthermore, the overemphasis on certain perceived strengths, inferred from anecdotal evidence, is inconsistent with the expert testimony and accepted professional analyses. Dr. Grant testified that “retarded individuals ... have strengths and they have weaknesses.” Indeed, one of the “essential” assumptions of the clinical definition is: “Within an individual, limitations often coexist with strengths.” AAMR 10th at 1, 8. In Black v. Bell, we noted expert testimony that “someone might be mentally retarded but still be able to carry out any of a number of everyday activities, such as maintaining a simple job or driving a car.” 664 F.3d 81, 99 (6th Cir.2011). Thus, we held that, in light of the expert testimony presented, “[a] full, independent review of whether [the petitioner] showed ... that he displayed adaptive deficits ... must therefore look at his weaknesses instead of at his strengths.” Id.; see also United States v. Davis, 611 F.Supp.2d 472, 499, 501 (D.Md.2009).

The irrelevance of Van Tran’s criminal conduct to functional academics is consistent with the TCCA’s decision in Howell v. State, No. W2009-02426-CCA-R3-PD, 2011 WL 2420378 (Tenn.Ct.Crim.App. June 14, 2011). In affirming the postcon-viction trial court’s finding that the defendant did not exhibit at least two deficits in adaptive behavior, the appellate court accepted that “the facts and circumstances of Petitioner’s convictions reflect that Petitioner adapted and adjusted to his surroundings throughout the course of his three state crime spree,” id. at *19, and upheld the trial court’s use of anecdotal evidence to contradict the expert conclusions about “additional deficits in adaptive behavior,” id. at *18. However, the appellate court did not use this assessment to contest the expert testimony presented to demonstrate deficits in academic functioning. See id. Rather, the trial court had accepted the experts’ findings that there were deficits in “academic functioning” and used the anecdotal evidence to counter “claims of additional deficits,” for which “the testing was done retroactively and was contradicted by Petitioner’s conduct.” Id. The most natural reading of the Howell decision supports the use of relevant anecdotal evidence to contradict specific findings regarding individual adaptive deficits, especially where there is a dearth of directed expert testimony regarding those deficits. Here, although Van Tran’s crime and ensuing actions could provide useful data points in assessing adaptive behavior deficits, the persuasive expert testimony *610that Van Tran suffered a deficit in the area of functional academics was not contradicted by the facts of his conviction.

The foregoing does not undermine the court’s ultimate decision-making role. As the Supreme Court said in Kansas v. Crane, 534 U.S. 407, 413, 122 S.Ct. 867, 151 L.Ed.2d 856 (2002), “the science of psychiatry, which informs but does not control ultimate legal determinations, is an ever-advancing science, whose distinctions do not seek precisely to mirror those of the law.” However, where lawmakers deliberately incorporate clinical standards into legal definitions, the courts strain the limits of reasonableness by rejecting expert opinions based exclusively on the courts’ own inexpert analysis. Although “the trial court is not required to follow the opinion of any particular expert,” it “must give full and fair consideration to all the evidence presented.” Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 242. The Tennessee Supreme Court has emphasized the importance of clinical judgment in guiding the courts to overall more accurate and consistent decisions. See id. at 246-47.

• Because the postconviction courts performed an analysis in terms of these ten areas of adaptive deficits, which it borrowed from the methods used by the expert witnesses, our review utilizes the same framework. Adherence to some chosen clinical framework, even if such adherence is not rigid, appears to be required by Tennessee law. In a comprehensive review of the state supreme court’s previous decisions interpreting § 39-13-203, the Coleman court stated that one of the principles guiding the application of the statute is that “[t]he Court’s application of the statute may be guided and informed by the clinical standards, criteria, and practices customarily used to assess and diagnose intellectual disability.” Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 240 (citing State v. Strode, 232 S.W.3d 1, 14 (Tenn.2007)). Although the use of the term “may” appears permissive, the state supreme court in the same opinion communicated a strong policy in favor of employing clinical definitions, supplied necessarily by experts in the field of intellectual disability, when it stated that “[ajligning the application of the statute with the clinical approach to diagnosing and assessing intellectual disability will result in more accurate and consistent decisions.” See id. at 247.

Indeed, the state supreme court has consistently indicated that the clinical definitions, although not binding, have a close semantic relationship to the statutory definition. For example, the Van Tran opinion of 2001 stated that the Tennessee courts refer to the DSM-IV framework for assessing adaptive deficits “for the purpose of providing insight and background into mental retardation,” although not strictly “for the purpose of expanding upon or interpreting the statutory definition in Tennessee.” 66 S.W.3d at 795 n. 4. Citing this statement with approval, the Coleman court stated: “Tennessee courts have thus relied on this [clinical] definition to better understand what the Tennessee Code means by addressing deficits in adaptive behavior.” 341 S.W.3d at 248 n. 86. The ten-area framework from the DSM-IV was cited with approval yet again in the Tennessee Supreme Court’s most recent decision expounding § 39-13-203, which called the DSM-IV’s ten-area framework “[t]he accepted clinical definition of adaptive functioning.” State v. Pruitt, 415 S.W.3d 180, 204 (Tenn.2013). The most reasonable reading of these various propositions is that the courts should be guided, though not constricted, by the two-out-often-area clinical definition from the DSM-IV.

More importantly, the court must assess adaptive deficits in light of the expert tes*611timony presented by the parties. The trial court “must give full and fair consideration to all of the evidence presented,” especially the testimony of experts who “bring to bear and utilize reliable practices, methods, standards, and data that are relevant in their particular fields.” Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 242. Although not mandating any particular analysis for adaptive deficits, the state supreme court in Coleman found that the trial court committed reversible error by distinguishing causally between intellectual disability and mental illness where that distinction was not supported by expert evidence, and hence there “was error in light of the evidence presented by” the defendant’s expert witnesses. Id. at 251-52. Because “[t]he State presented no contrary evidence,” there was “simply no sufficient basis on the present record to” make the conceptual distinction the court made. Id. at 252 (emphasis added).

The Tennessee Supreme Court’s recent decision in State v. Pruitt, 415 S.W.3d 180, (Tenn.2013), reinforces the proposition that “full and fair consideration” of expert testimony requires the trial court to treat as dispositive expert testimony establishing and utilizing methods of analysis that is uncontradicted by other expert testimony. In that case, two of the defendant’s experts testified that his I.Q. was below seventy. Id. at 202-03. One of the experts testified that a raw score of of sixty-six might have been slightly below the defendant’s true level of cognitive functioning because the defendant did not appear to take the test seriously; and the other expert noted that the defendant, answering hastily, might not have thought through all of the questions. Id. at 203. And “[although both experts stated that Mr. Pruitt may not have given his best effort on the tests, neither testified that Mr. Pruitt’s I.Q. would have been higher than seventy if his effort had been greater,” and “[n]either expert testified that Mr. Pruitt’s test scores were ‘unreliable.’ ” Id. The trial court nonetheless “found that neither [test score] was the product of Mr, Pruitt’s best efforts and that his grades in school and [state achievement test] scores indicated that the ... test scores were unreliable.” Id. at 200. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed this finding, distinguishing between the experts’ speculative asides about the test administration and the considerations that actually contributed to the experts’ final conclusions:

... Although the scores in this case were called into question by the trial court, neither expert opined that Mr. Pruitt’s I.Q. was greater than seventy, whether through lack of effort or on some other basis for adjustment of the raw score. Neither expert testified that the tests had an element of unreliability in their administration.

Under these circumstances, we are unwilling to uphold a finding that the tests are of no value in determining whether Mr. Pruitt has met his burden in showing that his I.Q. is seventy or below.... The evidence showed that Mr. Pruitt had I.Q. test scores below seventy. In the absence of expert testimony that his I.Q. was above seventy, we hold that the evidence preponderates against the trial court’s determination that Mr. Pruitt failed to prove that he had significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning as evidenced by a functional I.Q. of seventy or below.

Id. at 203. This analysis further supports Coleman’s implication that a trial court in Tennessee cannot disregard reliable expert opinions on the issue of intellectual disability when those opinions are based on clinically sound and professionally accepted methods and there is no other expert testimony that supports an analysis leading to a contrary conclusion.

*612It follows from the above discussion that Tennessee law does not permit the state trial court to use its independent judgment to disregard uncontroverted expert analyses, consider factors that the experts have testified are unreliable, or declare to be dispositive a factor irrelevant to the clinical definitions employed by the experts. At one point, the Tennessee Supreme Court declined to define in a careful and delineated form the term “adaptive deficits,” stating that the term should be construed in a commonsense way as “the inability of an individual to behave so as to adapt to surrounding circumstances.” State v. Smith, 893 S.W.2d 908, 918 (Tenn. 1994). But more recently, the court has turned toward reliance on expert analysis. With respect to intellectual functioning, the Coleman court stated that, for example, “[a]scertaining a person’s I.Q. is not a matter within the common knowledge of lay persons,” and concluded that “[e]xpert testimony in some form will generally be required to assist the trial court in determining whether a criminal defendant is a person with intellectual disability.” Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 241 (emphasis added). Adaptive deficits are similarly outside the ken of the lay judge. The Coleman court, as it did with I.Q., emphasized reliance on expert analysis: “Notwithstanding State v. Smith, Tennessee’s trial and appellate courts have repeatedly relied upon expert analysis of adaptive behavior or functioning predicated upon definitions advanced within the relevant medical and psychological community and authoritative texts such as the AAIDD Manual and the DSM-IV in determining whether the second prong has been satisfied.” Id. at 248.

This construction of Tennessee law under Coleman is buttressed by the United States Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Hall v. Florida, — U.S. -, 134 S.Ct. 1986, 188 L.Ed.2d 1007 (2014), which clarified the minimum Atkins standard under the U.S. Constitution (whereas Coleman interpreted state constitutional and statutory law). In Hall, the Court reasoned that the Constitution requires the courts and legislatures to follow clinical practices in defining intellectual disability. In that case, the Court confronted directly the question of “how intellectual disability must be defined in order to implement the[] principles and the holding of Atkins.” Id. at 1993. The Court emphasized that “[sjociety relies upon medical and professional expertise to define and explain how to diagnose the mental condition at issue,” for a variety of important legal determinations not limited to the death penalty. Id. The Court held that Florida’s strict I.Q. cutoff of 70 was unconstitutional, in part because it “disregard[ed] established medical practice.” See id. at 1995. This decision supports the position of the Tennessee Supreme Court that “the courts would make these fact-intensive and complex decisions with the assistance of experts in the field.” Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 244.

In light of the methods and analyses employed by the expert witnesses, the TCCA unreasonably determined that Van Tran was not intellectually disabled. The TCCA emphasized too heavily in its analysis the facts of the crime, which are not relevant to the analysis of most of the areas of adaptive behavior, especially that of functional academics. The TCCA also incorporated by reference the analysis of the state postconviction trial court, which undertook a careful analysis within the ten-area framework. That analysis, as incorporated by the TCCA, was reasonable except with respect to the area of functional academics.

The district court thus properly determined, notwithstanding AEDPA deference, that Van Tran suffers from deficits in two of the ten areas of adaptive behav*613ior, thereby satisfying the second prong of the statutory definition of intellectual disability.

Third Prong: Early Onset

Because under the now-prevailing standards for adjudicating claims of intellectual disability the TCCA used an erroneous causation analysis with respect to the third prong of early onset, Van Tran is entitled to habeas relief conditioned on a new evidentiary hearing before the state trial court. In particular, the postconviction hearing given to Van Tran did not meet the retroactively applicable substantive and procedural standards set forth by the Tennessee Supreme Court in Coleman v. State, 341 S.W.3d 221 (Tenn.2011).

The state postconviction court ruled that there was no onset of intellectual disability during the developmental period despite strong evidence of pre-age-eighteen intellectual and adaptive deficits. Two board-certified experts in psychology, both trained and experienced in intellectual disability, testified about Van Tran’s early developmental challenges, which stemmed from his early childhood and continued through his arrival in the United States shortly before he turned eighteen. Van Tran, 2006 WL 3327828, at *2-12. Dr. Grant discussed how Van Tran was late in important developmental milestones: he was not toilet-trained until five years of age, did not speak until the age of six, and reportedly never advanced with his Vietnamese language skills beyond those of a five-year-old child. See id. at *4-5. Dr. Grant testified that Van Tran’s most recent testing was consistent with prior achievement tests, and that his neurological impairment and intellectual deficiencies would have been stable over the course of his adult life, even despite the presence of schizophrenia in late adolescence. See id. at *6. Dr. Auble’s testimony presented a compelling enumeration of circumstances in Van Tran’s childhood that made it likely that Van Tran would have developed his neurological impairments before the age of eighteen:

Dr. Auble stated that the evidence indicates that the impairments appeared during the Petitioner’s developmental period. In this regard, she stated that the Petitioner’s life history indicates a number of risk factors that would have contributed to his mental retardation. Using a table listing various potential risk factors for mental retardation provided in the Tenth Edition of the AAMR, Dr. Auble proceeded to enumerate those factors applicable to the Petitioner. First, the Petitioner’s mother had poor prenatal care. The Petitioner’s mother suffered from a fall while she was pregnant resulting in “some bleeding and some other injuries.... ” The Petitioner’s mother “smoked about a half a pack a day at the time she was pregnant with him.” The Petitioner’s mother is “probably relatively limited in intelligence.” The Petitioner did not have medical treatment while he lived in Vietnam. As a child, he had malnutrition and reportedly had seizures. The Petitioner had traumatic brain injuries. The Petitioner also lacked adequate stimulation and experienced family poverty. His living situation was essentially homeless. During his childhood, he only attended school for two years. The Petitioner suffered child abuse and neglect. The Petitioner had no consistent caretakers or friends. His mother was a single parent, and the Petitioner did not really know his father. The Petitioner did not speak until he was six years old, and, when he did speak, his speech was abnormal. Presently, the Petitioner has speech impairments in both Vietnamese and English. The Petitioner was a poor student, although he did have good attendance. “These findings indicate that *614there was brain dysfunction that was present in childhood as well as present now.” Dr. Auble summarized, “... he had an impaired mother. He had lack of support from his family. He had abuse, poverty, war, discrimination ..., early drug and alcohol abuse. All of this contributed to his compromised functioning during childhood.”

Id. at *11. Both Drs. Grant and Auble noted that Van Tran’s early onset is corroborated by the academic difficulty he experienced during the year he spent in the Memphis school system, where he scored poorly on achievement tests and was slow to learn English.in relation to similarly situated peers. Id. at *4-6, 12. The State offered no expert testimony to rebut Van Tran’s experts’ testimony establishing that Van Tran suffered from significant intellectual and adaptive deficits from as early as his childhood in Vietnam.

The state trial court nonetheless found that Van Tran had not met his burden with respect to this third prong. The court relied substantially on the absence of any test of intellectual functioning before the age of eighteen. With respect to Van Tran’s late speech development, the court declined to attribute it to early-onset intellectual disability because “there could be a multitude of reasons why, as a child, petitioner did not speak or only spoke in a limited fashion.” The court similarly found that late toilet training could have been the result of a lack of instruction rather than neurological deficit, and that his sporadic school attendance and life on the streets could have caused his poor school performance. The court also found that “it is just as likely that any deficits in intellectual functioning occurred as a result of [paranoid schizophrenia], and thus, did not develop until after the age of eighteen.” The trial court summed up:

In this case there are no school records, no medical records, very little documented social history and the observations of the experts on this point are speculative at best. Additionally, there is evidence that tends to establish a legitimate alternative explanation for the petitioner’s below average I.Q. scores. Admittedly, Dr. Kenner could not say for sure how the petitioner would be [a]ffected. However, neither Dr. Grant nor Dr. Auble could say definitively that the disease had not [ajffected petitioner’s neurological functioning.

Having determined that, in light of the proof presented, it is not possible to discern when the petitioner’s deficits in intellectual functioning developed, this court finds petitioner has also failed to meet his burden with respect to the third prong of the statute.

The TCCA affirmed. The TCCA relied on the absence of pre-age-eighteen testing and the possibility that Van Tran’s deficits were caused by substance abuse or schizophrenia instead of impaired brain functioning. Moreover, the court held that “[t]he evidence of poverty, child abuse, lack of education, family dysfunction and poor social conditions are not enough to demonstrate that any deficits manifested during the developmental period.” Van Tran, 2006 WL 3327828, at *26. The TCCA thus upheld the postconviction court’s rejection of the expert evidence of Drs. Auble and Grant.

This conclusion is unreasonable, but only in light of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s intervening opinion in Coleman.

It was unreasonable for the TCCA to conclude in this case “that the fact that the Petitioner admits to alcohol and drug abuse and the fact that he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia may have impaired his brain functioning.” Van Tran, 2006 WL 3327828, at *26. Under Cole *615 man, it is not appropriate to separate neurological deficit from mental disorder as causes when determining whether a defendant actually suffers from cognitive and adaptive deficits, when the petitioner presents expert testimony to the contrary and the State does not rebut with its own experts. Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 252; see also State v. Pruitt, 415 S.W.3d 180, 203 (Tenn.2013) (holding that lower court’s finding I.Q. tests were unreliable was erroneous, in light of the fact that no expert testified that they were unreliable).

Furthermore, because the TCCA did not thoroughly address its reasoning about the impact of schizophrenia on Van Tran’s deficits, the court appears to have adopted the postconviction trial court’s erroneous determination that Van Tran’s cognitive functioning deteriorated as a result of suffering from untreated schizophrenia for seven years. This conclusion appeared to rely on the determination that Van Tran’s first treatment began when he was diagnosed by a Dr. Kenner in 1997, who also indicated at that time that Van Tran might have begun suffering from schizophrenia as early as 1989. However, the record clearly indicates that a Dr. Humble diagnosed Van Tran with schizophrenia in 1990, and that Van Tran began to be treated with medication in that same month. Thus, the TCCA could not have relied on the state trial court’s findings that Van Tran suffered from a long length of untreated schizophrenia and that his functioning may have deteriorated during that period of no treatment. Indeed, because Van Tran’s treatment began so early, the conclusion that Van Tran’s schizophrenia somehow tends to disprove early onset is undermined by Dr. Auble’s testimony that when schizophrenia is treated, “I.Q. scores do not decline and can, in fact, improve.” Van Tran, 2006 WL 3327828, at *10. Indeed, these corrections to the state trial court’s analysis imply the opposite of the state trial court’s conclusions. That is, because Van Tran’s standardized test scores may have improved with treatment, the fact that he continues to suffer from deficits even now after a period of improvement implies that he also suffered the deficits in the past, before the improvement. Thus, the TCCA’s causal analysis with respect to Van Tran’s schizophrenia is unreasonable factually as well as legally.

Similarly, regardless of whether Coleman would strictly forbid a causal analysis that separates out permanent impairments caused by drug and alcohol abuse, such an analysis is not reasonably supported by expert testimony in the record. There is no expert testimony regarding how a history of drug or alcohol abuse may have contributed to post-developmental impairment. In light of the facts and the expert testimony, the TCCA’s conclusion that alcohol and drug abuse may have permanently caused or substantially contributed to Van Tran’s cognitive and adaptive deficits in the three years between his eighteenth birthday and when he was incarcerated — the only time that any testimony establishes he had access to drugs and alcohol in his adult life — appears unlikely. Van Tran had begun abusing drugs and alcohol at a young age, so much of his drug and alcohol abuse probably occurred prior to his eighteenth birthday. Indeed, Dr. Auble suggested that early drug and alcohol abuse may have actually contributed to the manifestation of deficits before the age of eighteen. Thus, the TCCA’s causal analysis was also flawed with respect to Van Tran’s history with drug and alcohol abuse.

Further, the state court committed an error under Coleman by not giving “full and fair consideration” to the expert testimony regarding “risk factors.” See 341 S.W.3d at 242. The TCCA misconstrued *616the experts’ testimony by interpreting the presence of “risk factors” as a concession that Van Tran could not demonstrate that he actually was mentally retarded. See 2006 WL 3327828, at *26. The state court’s analysis conflated the issue of whether there are adaptive deficits with the related but distinct issue of distinguishing their causes:

The only proof establishing this third prong were reliance upon social factors present in the Petitioner’s childhood, including extreme poverty and child abuse. In this regard, we cannot conclude that the trial court’s conclusion that the Petitioner’s late development could have been the result of “neglect” rather than neurological deficit was in error or contrary to the evidence. The evidence of poverty, child abuse, lack of education, family dysfunction and poor social conditions are not enough to demonstrate that any deficits manifested during the developmental period.

Id.

There are two critical errors with this characterization of Van Tran’s case for early onset.

First, the state court mischaracterizes the nature of Van Tran’s proof; contrary to what the TCCA stated, the presence of risk factors were not the “only proof’ of intellectual disability during the developmental period. There was substantial real evidence of deficits being manifested before Van Tran reached the age of 18: his poor achievement tests in school in the United States, administered at the age of 17, which Dr. Adler opined “likely reflect an overestimate of his actual abilities”; the testimony of Van Tran’s mother that he was late in arriving at important developmental milestones, for instance, Van Tran did not speak until he was six; and the testimony of Dr. Grant that Van Tran’s early intellectual deficits could be inferred from his present subaverage I.Q. level because “I.Q. is usually, fairly consistent over time.” These forms of evidence, which arise directly or indirectly from Van Tran’s actual pre-age-eighteen behavior, constitute real proof of early onset rather than mere observations about his environment. See In re Mathis, 483 F.3d 395, 399 (5th Cir.2007). The state court incorrectly interpreted the experts’ “risk factor” analysis as a foundation of proof, rather than as an additional method of explaining, corroborating, and reinforcing their conclusion that Van Tran started suffering deficits in intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior at a young age.

Second, the state court committed a Coleman error by using the “risk factors” presented by Van Tran’s experts to dismiss intellectual disability as the cause of any deficits that were manifested during Van Tran’s childhood. That is, the state court appears to have interpreted the presence of risk factors as proof that the cause of any deficits was “neglect” rather than “neurological deficit.” See Van Tran, 2006 WL 3327828, at *26. This is an error under Coleman, in which the Tennessee Supreme Court held that a court commits legal error when it makes causal distinctions in the absence of expert testimony supporting the court’s causal analysis. See 341 S.W.3d at 252. In Coleman, the state supreme court relied exclusively on the expert testimony on record to support the court’s causal analysis. The experts in Coleman “concluded that, along with organic brain disorder and environmental factors, mental illness provided an aggravating factor joining together to limit Mr. Coleman’s adaptive functioning.” Id. Similarly, Van Tran’s experts testified that environmental factors as well as neurological deficits contributed to Van Tran’s adaptive and intellectual deficits. Just as in Coleman, the State presented no expert *617testimony to contradict Van Tran’s experts’ causal analysis, and therefore “[t]here is simply no sufficient basis on the •present record to separate the impact of mental illness and intellectual disability in assessing [the defendant’s] deficits in adaptive behavior.” Id. (emphasis added). The Coleman court found that, because it could not “conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the lower courts’ erroneous causation analysis did not have a substantial and injurious impact on their determination that Mr. Coleman failed to carry his burden of establishing deficits in adaptive behavior,” the error was not harmless. Id. For the same reasons, the TCCA’s erroneous rebanee on a causal analysis unsupported by expert testimony on the record had a substantial and injurious impact on its final determination that Van Tran is not intellectually disabled.

The district court below correctly pointed out that “[a]n expert’s testimony that an individual is ‘at risk’ of mental retardation because of congenital factors, poverty, and abuse is not enough to support an Atkins claim.” District Court Order at 74 (citing In re Mathis, 483 F.3d at 398-99). But Van Tran presented more than just expert testimony that he was “at risk” of intellectual disability at a young age. Van Tran’s experts testified that Van Tran actually was intellectually disabled under the statutory definition, which necessarily includes a finding that his intellectual and adaptive deficits were manifested in the developmental period. Dr. Grant stated in his report, “It is my professional opinion that Heck Van Tran is functioning within the mentally retarded range as defined by Tenn. Stat. Ann. § 39-13-203 in that he has subaverage intellectual functioning as evidenced by an I.Q. of 70 or below; he has deficits in adaptive behavior ... and both were manifested before the age of eighteen.” Dr. Auble concluded in her report, “It is my professional opinion that Mr. Tran met the criteria for mental retardation at the time of the offense. There is evidence that Mr. Tran’s functioning has been impaired since childhood, and that it continues to be impaired at present.”

Coleman is applicable in this case notwithstanding the State’s argument that it does not apply. We are bound by our published decision in Black v. Bell to consider Coleman retroactively in our review of an Atkins claim under AEDPA. 664 F.3d 81, 92 (6th Cir.2011). The defendant in Black claimed that his sentence of death was unconstitutional under Atkins, and he challenged in federal habeas proceedings the decision of the TCCA denying postcon-viction relief. After oral argument in the Sixth Circuit, the Tennessee Supreme Court released its decision in Coleman, which the panel characterized as “a significant decision explaining the Atkins standard under Tennessee law.” Id. at 91. Because “[t]he rules governing what factors may be considered in determining whether a defendant qualifies as mentally retarded under Atkins deal with questions of law,” the court concluded that “[t]he TCCA’s assessment of Black’s level of intellectual and adaptive functioning was ... contrary to Coleman under AEDPA’s legal standard.” Id. at 100. We held that, because the state court’s analysis regarding intellectual disability contradicted the governing law, de novo review of the issue was required. Id. at 97 (citing Fulcher v. Motley, 444 F.3d 791, 799 (6th Cir.2006), and West v. Bell, 550 F.3d 542, 553 (6th Cir. 2008)). But the court “refrain[ed] from reaching any independent conclusions ... because no court ha[d] yet analyzed Black’s Atkins claims according to the proper legal standard, which was set out by the Tennessee Supreme Court in Coleman.” Id. at 101. We vacated and remanded to the district court “to review the record based on the standard set out in *618 Coleman.” Id.; see also Black v. Colson, No. 3:00-0764, 2013 WL 230664 (M.D.Tenn. Jan. 22, 2013) (conducting the independent analysis on remand).

Contrary to the State’s argument, the Tennessee Supreme Court’s holding in Keen v. State that “Coleman’s holding ... was not a constitutional ruling,” 398 S.W.3d 594, 609 (Tenn.2012), does not affect Black’s holding. First, the court in Keen was presented with a different issue in a different procedural context. The court in that case was determining whether the decision in Coleman could be grounds for reopening a case under Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-30-117(a)(l), which permits a motion to reopen on the basis of “a final ruling of an appellate court establishing a constitutional right.” See Keen, 398 S.W.3d at 608. In contrast, here we are presented with determining what is “clearly established federal law” for the purposes of a petition for relief under § 2254. Coleman can still change the governing applicable law even if it does not assert a new constitutional right under Tennessee law. Second, the holding in Black does not rely upon the constitutional status of Coleman. Rather, the court in Black characterized Coleman merely as “a significant decision explaining the Atkins standard under Tennessee law,” 664 F.3d at 91 (emphasis added), and one that “elucidates Tennessee’s interpretation of Atkins’s legal standard,” id. at 92 (first emphasis added). Indeed, the Tennessee Supreme Court in Keen characterized Coleman’s relationship to Van Tran and Atkins’s constitutional right in a similar way, stating that Coleman “concerned the interpretation of TenmCode Ann. § 39-13-203” and that it “supplemented” and “clarified” previous case law. See 398 S.W.3d at 608. In this way, Keen actually supports Black’s reading of Coleman’s effect on Tennessee law.

Furthermore, the Tennessee Supreme Court itself has applied Coleman retroactively to review proceedings that occurred before Coleman. In State v. Pruitt, the court relied on Coleman to reverse a finding that the defendant did not have an I.Q. of seventy or below, even though the trial court’s decision came out “nearly two years before [the court] clarified in Coleman the process and criteria a trial court should use” to adjudicate an Atkins claim. 415 S.W.3d at 203. Thus, Black’s retroactive application of Coleman is also consistent with Tennessee law, which provides the procedural law that governs Van Tran’s Atkins claim. See Bobby v. Bies, 556 U.S. 825, 831, 129 S.Ct. 2145, 173 L.Ed.2d 1173 (2009).

Black’s holding that this court may grant relief based upon Coleman applies to this case, because this case is in relevant ways procedurally identical to Black. Both cases involve Atkins claims in Tennessee. In both cases, the TCCA denied postconviction relief and the federal district court denied habeas relief based on the TCCA’s decision before Coleman was decided. In both cases, Coleman was decided before the district court was able to fully consider the case. Thus, as in Black, we have a situation in which Coleman intervened in between the decision of the district court and consideration by this court, changing the governing law regarding the standards by which Atkins claims in Tennessee are decided.

As indicated above, in Coleman, the defendant appealed the denial of postconviction relief in the state courts. 341 S.W.3d at 224. He had presented testimony by two expert witnesses to establish an Atkins claim under Tennessee’s statutory definition of intellectual disability, while the State presented no contrary evidence. Id. at 227. The state supreme court declined to decide the proper approach to *619determine whether a defendant has demonstrated deficits in adaptive behavior, see id. at 251-52 & n. 93, but rather held more narrowly that “distinguishing causally between intellectual disability and mental illness in the present case was error in light of the evidence presented” by the two experts, id. at 252. Although “the trial court is not required to follow the opinion of any particular expert,” it “must give full and fair consideration to all the evidence presented.” Id. at 242. Furthermore, in formulating their opinions, “experts may bring to bear and utilize reliable practices, methods, standards, and data that are relevant in their particular fields.” Id. The court remanded so that the State could challenge the admissibility of the petitioner’s experts’ testimony and present additional expert testimony to counter the petitioner’s. Id. at 253.

In light of Coleman’s enunciation of the proper legal standard by which to evaluate Atkins claims, the TCCA’s decision did not apply the proper legal standard and was therefore contrary to clearly established governing law for the reasons given above. It is sufficient to draw relevant comparisons between this case and Coleman to demonstrate how the TCCA erred here. Like Coleman, the State presented no expert testimony to contradict the analysis of Van Tran’s experts. Like Coleman, the TCCA relied upon the presence of various factors that may have contributed to Van Tran’s deficits in intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior in order to cast doubt on experts’ opinion that intellectual disability caused these deficits. In both cases, “[biased upon the evidence presented” by the expert testimony, these factors are “simply too intertwined in cause and effect for such unraveling.” See Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 252. It is inappropriate in light of the expert testimony to treat “mental illness and intellectual disabilities as separate dichotomous spheres rather than as interwoven causes.” See id. at 249.

Similar to the TCCA’s decision that was under review in Black v. Bell, here “the record is rife with conflicting testimony” regarding onset, and “[t]he TCCA’s decision is of little help because the court made so few definitive factual determinations leading up to its ultimate conclusion” that Van Tran did not show onset by a preponderance of the evidence. 664 F.3d at 100. Because it is at least clear that the TCCA’s decision was not entirely consistent with Coleman, the TCCA’s assessment of Van Tran’s intellectual and adaptive functioning prior to the age of 18 was contrary to Coleman.

The Nature of the Remand

This case presents a unique circumstance in that the constitutional protection depends on the content of state law that has changed retroactively since the relevant state court ruled, and the relevant state court ruled unreasonably in light of the change. Deference to the state court’s ability to apply its own law first, even where such application is compelled by the U.S. Constitution, suggests that the proper course at this stage is for the district court to grant a writ of habeas corpus prohibiting imposition of the death penalty, conditioned upon the fresh determination by the Tennessee courts whether Van Tran is intellectually disabled under the clarified principles set out in Coleman.

Such relief is consistent with our “broad discretion in conditioning a judgment granting habeas corpus relief, [to] dispose of habeas corpus cases ‘as law and justice require.’ ” Pickens v. Howes, 549 F.3d 377, 382 (6th Cir.2008) (quoting Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U.S. 770, 775, 107 S.Ct. 2113, 95 L.Ed.2d 724 (1987)). Here, the defendant’s Atkins claim was not adjudicated under the governing legal stan*620dard, under which the enforcement of the substantive constitutional prohibition is inextricably intertwined with certain eviden-tiary and procedural considerations governed by state law. When a constitutional error may be cured by further state proceedings, the common course is to grant the writ of habeas corpus conditional upon the state court’s correcting the error. See Gentry v. Deuth, 456 F.3d 687, 692 (6th Cir.2006).

This relief is consistent with the relief provided in Coleman itself. The Coleman court remanded to the state postconviction trial court for a new hearing under the standards enunciated in the case, and that hearing included the more robust, adversarial consideration of expert testimony in the final determination. See 341 S.W.3d at 253. The Coleman court permitted the State to correct its failure to present expert testimony to challenge the clinical analyses of the defendant’s experts. The court stated that “[o]n remand, the State may challenge the admissibility of [the defendant’s experts’] testimony, present expert testimony countering [those experts’] methods or conclusions on this issue, or do both.” Coleman, 341 S.W.3d at 253. The Coleman court appeared to believe that it was important for the State to have an opportunity to correct a procedural mistake that the court was only then enunciating. Similarly, the State in Van Tran’s hearing before the state postconviction court occurred before Coleman came out, and the State did not act with the benefit of knowing the procedural implications of Coleman’s rules, which are now retroactively applicable to that proceeding. In fashioning relief for Van Tran in this case, we, like the Coleman court, should also take into consideration the State’s interest in being able to correct a flaw in its case against Van Tran that it might not have been able to foresee.

Moreover, the procedural principles of Atkins suggest that the state postconviction trial court would be the most appropriate venue for de novo consideration under the new governing rules. Where a predominantly procedural mistake is made in a previous proceeding and the constitutionally required process must start anew, it is proper to let the court that would normally get the first crack at the issue take it up again. In Bobby v. Bies, the state court’s consideration of the defendant’s intellectual disability in a previous proceeding did not comply with Atkins. See 556 U.S. 825, 831-32, 129 S.Ct. 2145, 173 L.Ed.2d 1173 (2009). The Supreme Court reversed the federal district court’s grant of habeas relief pursuant to Atkins, reasoning that it was inappropriate to disrupt the state court’s Atkins proceedings. See id. at 837, 129 S.Ct. 2145. The Court stated that “[r]ecourse first to [state] courts is just what this Court envisioned in remitting to the States responsibility for implementing the Atkins decision.” Id. Like the state court in Bobby v. Bies, Tennessee is poised to offer the necessary relief of a new Atkins hearing.

We recognize that in Black we remanded to the district court with instructions to “review the record based on the standard set out in Coleman and consistent with [the Black ] opinion.” 664 F.3d at 101. In Black, however, the State had presented contrary expert evidence that could be evaluated by the federal court. Id. at 89. In contrast, in this case as in Coleman itself, the State — unaware of the as-yet-undecided Coleman case — essentially presented no expert testimony. Because of this difference, the remedy provided in Black v. Bell, a remand to the district court for de novo consideration of the Atkins issue, would likely not achieve the optimal balance between Van Tran’s and the State’s separate interests in relitigat-ing under the new Coleman principles.

*621That is, it is necessary, as it was in Coleman, to fashion a remedy that allows the State to make the showing that Coleman now requires. A remand to the district court to consider the Atkins claim under the Coleman standard might not allow the State to present evidence, if it were determined that Van Tran was not independently entitled to a hearing. As a general matter, the district court could hold some form of evidentiary hearing to allow Van Tran to present additional evidence to support his claim. See, e.g., Jackson v. Norris, 615 F.3d 959, 962-64 (8th Cir.2010). And AEDPA did not change the “basic rule” that “the decision to grant an evidentiary hearing [is] generally left to the sound discretion of district courts.” Schriro v. Landrigan, 550 U.S. 465, 473, 127 S.Ct. 1933, 167 L.Ed.2d 836 (2007) (citing Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 313, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963)). When a court performs an independent review of a claim, like this, it may conduct an evidentiary hearing pursuant to the AEDPA’s hearing section, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e), in order to permit the petitioner to present additional evidence. See Cullen v. Pinholster, — U.S. -, 131 S.Ct. 1388, 1412, 179 L.Ed.2d 557 (2011) (Breyer, J., concurring); see also Burgess v. Comm’r, Ala. Dep’t of Carr., 723 F.3d 1308, 1321-22 (11th Cir.2013) (reversing denial of request for evidentiary hearing on Atkins claim); Allen v. Buss, 558 F.3d 657, 665 (7th Cir.2009) (same). However, § 2254(e)(2) and prior case law discussing the court’s basic discretion to hear new evidence do not appear to contemplate the peculiar situation in which the State would request an evidentiary hearing to develop in federal court its case that had not been fully developed in the state court. Tennessee, especially in light of the court’s remand order in Coleman, is unquestionably capable of providing procedural relief for both Van Tran and the State. Thus, a balanced retroactive application of Coleman logically requires a conditional writ in the context of this case.

C. Challenge to the “Heinous, Atrocious, or Cruel” Aggravating Circumstance

Van Tran argues that the “depravity of mind” aggravating circumstance in Tenn. Code Ann. § 39 — 2—203(i)(5) (1982) (now codified in § 39-13-204(i)(5) (2011)), as applied in this case, is unconstitutionally vague. He maintains that the state court’s decision unreasonably applied Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed.2d 913 (1976), and was contrary to Bell v. Cone, 543 U.S. 447, 125 S.Ct. 847, 160 L.Ed.2d 881 (2005). In a footnote, Van Tran argues that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury’s verdict that Kai Yin Chuey’s murder showed depravity of mind beyond a reasonable doubt. Because there was sufficient evidence for a reasonable factfinder to find that Van Tran evidenced depravity of mind under the state supreme court’s constitutionally permissible narrowing construction, the district court’s denial of Van Tran’s petition on this ground must be upheld.

The penalty phase jury sentenced Van Tran to death based on the trial court’s aggravating-factor instruction that the murder must be found to have been “especially cruel in that it involved depravity of mind.” State v. Van Tran, 864 S.W.2d 465, 470 (Tenn.1993). Under the Tennessee Code at the time, a defendant could be sentenced to death if the jury found that “[t]he murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel in that it involved torture or depravity of mind.” Id. at 478 (quoting Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-2-203(0(6) (1982)). On direct appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court disapproved of the deletion of the words “heinous” and “atrocious” from the *622instruction but ultimately affirmed on the grounds that the curtailed instruction did not likely confuse the jurors, that the jury still made the dispositive “depravity of mind” finding, and that the omission had no effect on the result. Id. at 479.

We must uphold the Tennessee Supreme Court’s finding that Van Tran committed murder in an especially cruel way that evinced depravity of mind because the court did not unreasonably apply the constitutionally permissible narrowing construction of the statute established by previous decisions of the court. Even if the instruction given by the sentencing court is deemed to be unconstitutionally vague, we will still uphold the sentence where the state appellate court properly applied a narrowing construction of a possibly vague statutory enhancement. Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, 653-54, 110 S.Ct. 3047, 111 L.Ed.2d 511 (1990), overruled on other grounds by Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002). The United States Supreme Court has previously affirmed a sentence of death under the arguably vague statutory aggravating circumstance that was applied in this case, because the Tennessee Supreme Court “has recognized that its narrowing construction is constitutionally compelled and has affirmatively assumed the responsibility to ensure that the aggravating circumstance is applied constitutionally in each case.” Bell v. Cone, 543 U.S. 447, 456, 125 S.Ct. 847, 160 L.Ed.2d 881 (2005).

Here, the state supreme court was guided by the constitutionally permissible narrowing construction of the statute enunciated in State v. Williams, 690 S.W.2d 517 (Tenn.1985). “Torture” or “depravity of mind” must also be found in addition to cruelty, heinousness, or atrociousness, and “depravity of mind” can be found even where there is no gratuitous infliction of severe pain, physical or mental, that amounts to torture. Id. at 529. “Moral depravity” is equivalent to a state of mind of “moral corruption,” which could be shown by a willingness to torture, but could also be shown by other morally corrupt acts, such as mutilation of a dead body. See id. at 529-30. Although the trial court omitted heinousness or atrociousness as aggravating factors, the court gave the Williams definitions of “cruelty” and “depravity of mind” and stated that a finding of both was sufficient to impose the death sentence on Van Tran; the Tennessee Supreme Court relied upon this truncated instruction in affirming Van Tran’s sentence of death. Van Tran, 864 S.W.2d 465, 479. We have previously held that the narrowing construction of Williams, including the implication that depravity of mind or torture can be found without torture, is constitutionally permissible. Payne v. Bell, 418 F.3d 644, 660 (6th Cir. 2005). In particular, we noted that the Williams construction incorporated and expounded on previous decisions of the state supreme court, including constructions already declared constitutional by the United States Supreme Court. See id.

Here, the state supreme court reasonably applied the constitutionally permissible narrowed construction of the aggravating circumstance as interpreted and applied in the state court’s previous decisions. See Bell v. Cone, 543 U.S. at 457, 125 S.Ct. 847. The facts of this case fit within the narrowed definition as applied in these previous cases. The state supreme court in Van Tran’s case followed State v. Black, in which it had previously held that the “brutal and senseless execution style murder of a helpless child, who could not protect herself, evinces torture or depravity of mind.” 815 S.W.2d 166, 181-82 (Tenn.1991). Analogously, Van Tran’s victim was helpless, since Kai Yin Chuey was a slight seven*623ty-four-year-old woman whom Van Tran had already shot through the throat and who was lying defenseless on the floor. And like Black, when Van Tran placed his gun to her head and fatally shot her, he was committing an execution-style murder, in which the murderer kills the victim by shooting them at close range after rendering them helpless. The Eleventh Circuit in Hargrave v. Wainwright, in a similar situation, explained:

An execution-style murder, as defined by the Florida courts, is typically one in which the defendant, without provocation, first renders his victim helpless— for example, by wounding the victim, tying the victim’s hands, or ordering the victim to the floor — and then shoots the victim in the head at close range, often to eliminate the victim as a future witness.

804 F.2d 1182, 1195 (11th Cir.1986). In State v. Dicks, 615 S.W.2d 126, 127, 132 (Tenn.1981), the Tennessee Supreme Court held that a murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel where the defendant slashed the victim’s throat while the victim lay unconscious due to a blow to the head. The U.S. Supreme Court has approved the narrowing construction of the aggravating circumstance that the Tennessee Supreme Court used in Dicks, stating that an aggravator “directed at the conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim” meaningfully narrows the discretion of the court and thereby avoids a constitutional vagueness problem. Bell v. Cone, 543 U.S. at 457-58, 125 S.Ct. 847 (quoting Dicks, 615 S.W.2d at 132) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Under these precedents and with a view of the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, it was reasonable for the state court to conclude that a rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Van Tran acted with depravity of mind. In the statement Van Tran made to the police, he indicated that he shot Kai Yin Chuey once accidentally and once intentionally. Van Tran, 864 S.W.2d at 468-69. The Tennessee Supreme Court described her as a helpless seventy-four-year-old woman who had already been shot by Van Tran and was lying on the floor unable to protect herself when Tran shot her in the back of her head. Id. at 480. She was four feet, nine inches tall, and weighed only ninety pounds. The shot to the back of her head was a contact wound, where the muzzle of the weapon was placed against the skin’s surface. Id. at 470. Kai Yin Chuey was not a threat to Van Tran, and by the time he shot her the second time Arthur Lee was no longer a threat because Van Tran had killed him. Because the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision that a rational trier of fact could have found Tran showed depravity of mind was not objectively unreasonable, we cannot grant Van Tran habeas relief on the basis that the application of the aggravating circumstance was unconstitutional.

D. Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claim

Van Tran argues that penalty phase counsel failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence, failed to introduce evidence to rebut the “depravity of mind” aggravating circumstance, failed to object to prosecutorial misconduct in closing argument, and failed to preserve and present issues on appeal. This court certified Tran’s claim that counsel failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence, but not his other ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims. This court cannot consider claims not certified for appeal, so those claims will not be addressed. See 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c); Abdur’Rahman v. Colson, 649 F.3d 468, 473 (6th Cir.2011).

*624Because the state court did not unreasonably apply the Strickland standard that governs ineffective-assistanee-of-counsel claims, Van Tran is not entitled to relief on this ground. Under the deferential review standards of AEDPA, the already deferential Strickland standard becomes doubly deferential: “[t]he question is whether there is any reasonable argument that counsel satisfied Strickland’s, deferential standard.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 131 S.Ct. 770, 788, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011). In order to gain relief, Van Tran must satisfy both Strickland prongs: he must prove both that his counsel was objectively deficient and that he was prejudiced by his counsel’s deficient performance. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). The postconviction review court found that Van Tran had neither proven that trial counsel conducted an improper investigation or had unreasonably failed to present mitigating evidence, nor established prejudice. Van Tran, 1999 WL 177560, at *12 (Tenn.Ct. Crim.App. Apr. 1, 1999). Van Tran is not entitled to relief if we find that the post-conviction review court was not unreasonable in its determination regarding just one of the prongs.

Because the state postconviction court’s determination that Van Tran suffered no prejudice was a reasonable application of the prejudice prong of the Strickland test, and the court relied on a reasonable determination of the facts, Van Tran must be denied habeas relief according to § 2254(d). Numerous relevant mitigating circumstances about Van Tran’s continuous social and education deprivations throughout life were presented at the initial trial; the additional mitigating evidence that Van Tran argues would have been presented had his counsel pursued further investigation is similar to and cumulative to. the evidence that was actually presented. The balance of mitigating and aggravating circumstances was close and the presentation of additional and more precise mitigating circumstances about Van Tran’s upbringing and emotional and mental states may have made a difference in the jury’s ultimate determination. However, we cannot say that the state postconviction court was unreasonable in determining that because “[m]uch of this evidence is similar to that which was presented to the jury,” Van Tran had failed to “establish[] a reasonable probability that the jury’s determination would have been different.” Van Tran, 1999 WL 177560, at * 12.

The state court found that trial counsel had presented various forms of evidence in mitigation that were considered in adjudicating Van Tran’s culpability, including his “cooperation with the FBI, good employment history, lack of prior criminal involvement, remorse for the homicides, personal history as a child of a Vietnamese mother and an American father, difficult childhood and educational problems.” Van Tran, 1999 WL 177560, at *12 (citing Van Tran, 864 S.W.2d at 482). These mitigating circumstances were presented during the testimony of several witnesses, including Van Tran’s mother, supervisors from Van Tran’s jobs, and Dr. Khanna, a clinical psychologist who testified that Van Tran was below average intelligence, depressed, and under a great deal of stress. Id. at *8, 11. For instance, Dr. Khanna testified to horrid abuses during Van Tran’s childhood, including a time spent in an orphanage, a time spent with his aunt in the countryside where she tied him to a tree naked and he was bit by ants, a period in which he lived alone on the streets as a young child, and early exposure to illicit substances. Dr. Khanna also testified that Van Tran had been abusing an inordinate amount of drugs and alcohol in the three *625days preceding the robbery, such that “he had lost all judgment — all reason — and he didn’t know probably where he was.” Van Tran’s trial counsel thus appears to have presented a fairly thorough, if not comprehensive, social and personal history of Van Tran that highlighted many mitigating factors.

The mitigating evidence that Van Tran argues his counsel failed to present is remarkably similar to the kind of evidence that was presented at trial. None of the evidence differs much in substance from what was presented; it differs mostly in form. Van Tran argues that his trial counsel should have provided the testimony of more experts: a licensed social worker fluent in Vietnamese and English to testify about the sociocultural history of Vietnam and the plight of the Amerasian population; a board-certified psychologist to testify about Van Tran’s post-traumatic stress disorder and the effects of his Amerasian status on his psychological well-being; an internist with a specialty in addiction to testify at greater length about Van Tran’s chemical dependency issues arising out of hypervigilance related to his difficult upbringing, and how this would have affected his perception and judgment during the murder; and, finally, a board-certified forensic and child psychiatrist to attest to Tran’s hypersensitivity and threat perception and explain their origins in his traumatic upbringing. Appellant’s Br. at 69-77. Van Tran argues that this information “changes the ‘entire evidentiary picture’ ” by “answering] the questions ... left unanswered about the significance of Tran’s early history, his status as an Amerasian, why he abused drugs, and whether shooting Kai Yin Chuey was a cold-blooded act.” Appellant’s Br. at 77-78. But the TCCA could reasonably conclude that the picture is not that different.

The most significant difference between what evidence was presented at trial and what was presented in the postconviction proceeding is that the latter is presented in more scientific terms. See, e.g., Appellant’s Br. at 78 (describing the evidence that trial counsel failed to present as a “scientifically-grounded portrait of Tran”). Although the form of the proposed additional mitigation evidence differs in its manner of presentation, the differences are, from the jury’s perspective of final decisionmaker, somewhat superficial. That is, the substance of these different analyses — whether based on Van Tran’s neurophysiology, the outcast social status of Amerasians, or the chemical and physiological details of his substance abuse — is substantially the same: Van Tran has suffered immense deprivation and misfortune during his life, which have all had a great impact on his ability to reason and make decisions. Precisely this argument was presented to the jury by the trial testimony of Dr. Khanna.

Methodological diversity and precision are not necessarily sufficient to demonstrate that the jury would have arrived at a different conclusion, particularly where the jury’s final determination is one that is unconstrained by technical scientific jargon. Here, the jury was asked to find simply whether Van Tran’s crime was especially cruel, in that it involved depravity of mind. Boiled down to this purest essence of common-sense judgment, this determination requires no specialty in psychology, psychiatry, neurophysiology, psychopharmacology, or sociocultural anthropology.

The superfluity of presenting the same substance in a different form is supported by our precedent. In Clark v. Mitchell, this court held that a state court was reasonable in determining that a petitioner had failed to demonstrate prejudice by his *626counsel’s failure to present mitigation evidence in a suppression hearing in which the issue was whether the defendant had waived his rights voluntarily and knowingly. 425 F.3d 270, 281-82 (6th Cir.2005). At the suppression hearing, a psychiatrist had testified in favor of the defendant, concluding that the defendant’s mental function would be considered “borderline defective” and that he suffered from acute brain damage that would have interfered with his decision making abilities. Id. at 274-75. On appeal, the defendant argued that his counsel should have presented testimony from a neuropsychologist or pharmacologist to present evidence about organic brain syndrome and defendant’s drug addiction and related withdrawal symptoms, which arguably would have more comprehensively explained his actions. Id. at 276. This court held that

[t]he state court was also reasonable in determining that Clark had failed to demonstrate prejudice as a result of his counsel’s failure to introduce evidence from a neuropsychologist or pharmacologist at his suppression hearing or at trial. Clark’s defense team introduced evidence at Clark’s suppression hearing from a psychiatrist who concluded that Clark was suffering from depression, suicidal tendencies, and brain impairments that would have made Clark less able to understand his choices and to resist pressure from other individuals. It thus was reasonable for the state court to conclude that new information sought to he introduced by Clark about his drug addiction and brain disorder did not differ in a substantial way from the evidence actually presented at the suppression hearing and, accordingly, that Clark could not demonstrate that he was prejudiced by his counsel’s failure to present such evidence.

Id. at 282-83 (emphasis added).

Although in the present case Van Tran presents a much more substantial argument about the presentation of his case in mitigation, his argument still suffers from the same problem that the Clark petitioner’s did, namely that the evidence does not differ in a substantial way from the evidence actually presented at trial. Van Tran’s counsel presented substantial testimony about Van Tran’s horrific childhood and his dependence on drugs and the impact these influences had on his psychological state at the time of the crime. The court of criminal appeals followed this analysis in arriving at its conclusion:

The suggested mitigating evidence related to petitioner’s cultural and social background and his medical condition. Much of this evidence is similar to that which was presented to the jury. Furthermore, considering the nature and circumstances of the offense, and the applicability of the two aggravating circumstances of mass murder and depravity of mind, we conclude petitioner has not established a reasonable probability that the jury’s determination would have been different had this evidence been presented.

Van Tran, 1999 WL 177560, at *12. “[F]airminded jurists could disagree” on whether this is the correct result under federal law, and therefore we must uphold the state court’s decision under AEDPA as not an unreasonable application of established federal law. See Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 131 S.Ct. 770, 786, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011).

Accordingly, Van Tran is not entitled to relief for his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.

III.

Van Tran is not entitled to relief on his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel or unconstitutional vagueness claims. The state *627court’s application of Tennessee law with regard to whether Van Tran is intellectually disabled under Atkins was contrary to clearly established federal law. Accordingly, we VACATE and REMAND to the district court so that the district court may grant a CONDITIONAL WRIT OF HA-BEAS CORPUS prohibiting execution unless the State completes a new Atkins hearing consistent with this opinion.