Petitions of the week

Issues: (1) Whether a parent claiming substantive due process violations needs to demonstrate that the countys conduct shocks the conscience, as five circuits have held, or whether omissions by the countyi.e., the lack of obtaining parental notice and consentalone result in municipal liability, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held below; (2) whether parental notice and consent (or a court order) are prerequisites to a childs medical examination, even if (i) the exams are diagnostic and do not involve treatment decisions; and (ii) any investigatory purpose of the examinations is incidental to the primary purposes of protecting the childs health and preventing the spread of contagious disease; and (3) whether, in conducting its special needs balancing test under the Fourth Amendment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit erred by disregarding the governments interest in protecting the health of other children and center staff.

Issue:Whether a finding of circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness may be premised on a district courts belief in the truth of the hearsay statement, and its assessment of the credibility of the hearsay witnesses, rather than the circumstances surrounding the making of the statement.

Issue: Whether Washingtons compelling nonmember providers to accept a private organization as their exclusive representative for dealing with the state over public policy is one of the other contexts in which the significant impingement on associational freedoms is not tolerated by the First Amendment.

Issues:(1) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit erred in holdingconsistent with decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit but in conflict with those of the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 3rd, 5th and 7th Circuitsthat underFirestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, which imposes a highly deferential standard of judicial review to interpretations of Employee Retirement Income Security Act plans by administrators to whom the plans delegate interpretive discretion, an administrators determination that an ERISA plan authorizes certain remedial actions or measures is necessarily unreasonable merely because the plan is silent on the matter; and (2) whether theFirestonedeference standard allows courts to reject an otherwise reasonable plan construction that is lawful under ERISA but, in the courts view, pushes ERISAs boundaries.

Issue:Whether federal courts have the inherent authority to make coercive appointments of counsel in civil cases.