88
Per Curiam
comply with those rules would not be an adequate and independent ground for the state court to disregard that claim.
Neither have petitioners satisfied us that they presented their federal claim with "fair precision and in due time." They argue that they raised their federal due process claim in their initial brief before the Alabama Supreme Court, and point to two pages of that brief discussing Brown v. Ticor, 982 F. 2d 386 (CA9 1992), cert. dism'd as improvidently granted, 511 U. S. 117 (1994). Although Ticor is relevant to the federal claim they present here, see 982 F. 2d, at 392, they mentioned the case below in the context of an entirely different argument that the right to a jury trial under § 11 of the Alabama Constitution gives a plaintiff the right to opt out of a class-action settlement agreement. The discussion of "a federal case, in the midst of an unrelated argument, is insufficient to inform a state court that it has been presented with a claim." Board of Directors of Rotary Int'l, supra, at 550, n. 9.
Equally unavailing is petitioners' reliance on three other pages of their Alabama Supreme Court brief. Although that portion begins with a heading asserting that "[m]inimum due process requires that Class Members be given the right to opt out or exclude themselves from the class," see Brief for Appellants in Nos. 1931603 et al. (Sup. Ct. Ala.), p. 23, the discussion under that heading addresses only whether members of the class who were not Alabama residents had been afforded due process under Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U. S. 797 (1985). We therefore think that a court may fairly have read this section as arguing, as had the petitioner in Shutts, id., at 802, that the state court lacked personal jurisdiction over out-of-state class members, not the different and broader question of whether, if a state
National Life Insurance Company 4, n. 2 (citing Ala. Rule App. Proc. 28(a)(3)), and Eady v. Stewart Dredging & Construction Co., Inc., 463 So. 2d 156, 157 (Ala. 1985); Brief for Respondent Robertson 16, n. 12 (citing Eady). Petitioners have not even responded to that argument.
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