A foreign arbitration award should not be enforced if it is “repugnant to fundamental notions of what is decent and just in the United States.” Estate of Ke v. Yu, 105 F.4th 648, 660 (4th Cir. 2024) (cleaned up). Among them is the notion that proceedings must be “fundamentally fair.” Intl Broth. of Elec. Workers v. CSX Transp., Inc., 446 F.3d 714, 720 (7th Cir. 2006). And that requires a “fair opportunity to present ev1- dence and argument” to the arbitral panel. Brown uv. Brown-Thill, 762 F.3d 814, 820 (8th Cir. 2014).

The Ninth Circuit allowed enforcement of a foreign award issued after a hearing where one of three arbi- trators engaged in clear misconduct. During one side’s arguments, the rogue arbitrator paid close attention. During the other’s, he did everything but arbitrate— he used the restroom, spoke to a third party, rode ina car, and boarded a train. His misbehavior derailed the arbitration and forced its early termination.

The Ninth Circuit acknowledged that this arbitra- tor displayed a “concerning lack of attention.” 4a. Yet it held that his conduct was harmless because “the re- maining two arbitrators” behaved properly. /d. That holding clashes with the views of many other courts, including this one, which have vacated awards when just one of three arbitrators misbehaved. See, e.g., Commonwealth Coatings Corp. v. Contl Cas. Co., 398 U.S. 145, 150 (1968). This case asks whether fairness demands that all appointed arbitrators perform with integrity, or whether two out of three is sufficient.

The question presented 1s:

Do arbitration proceedings held by a three-member panel lack fundamental fairness if one arbitrator has functionally abandoned his post?

This case involves an attempt by several law enforcement officers to detain and arrest Respondents’ decedent Jeffery Krueger on July 1, 2019. On that night, in the middle of a busy highway, Mr. Krueger resisted the arresting deputies’ commands. Other officers — including Petitioners Blair, Craig, McFarland and Nevitt — were summoned to the scene to assist after the arrest had already begun. They were unaware of the basis or background for the arrest but reasonably believed Mr. Krueger was resisting arrest and assaulting police officers. Mr. Krueger was ultimately restrained, placed in a prone position in handcuffs and yet continued to struggle. The officers and deputies eventually placed leg chains and a hobble chain on Mr. Krueger and then removed all controlling force. However, soon thereafter, Mr. Krueger began shallow breathing. He was taken to a hospital, but he ultimately passed away. The medical examiner found that the probable cause of death was “cardiac dysrhythmias due to probable acute psychosis in the setting of physical exertion and restraint.”

The District Court rejected Petitioners’ qualified immunity defense with regard to Respondents’ Fourth Amendment excessive force claim. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals conducted a de novo review, rejected portions of the findings of the District Court, but affirmed the denial of qualified immunity. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Tenth Circuit erred in denying

qualified immunity to Petitioners on the issue of excessive force without conducting an

The erroneous admission over objection of a defendant’s coerced confession at a criminal trial will require a retrial unless the reviewing court is “able to declare a belief that [the error] was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Anizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 295 (1991) (quoting Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24 (1967)). Here, in a bench trial, the court denied the defendant’s motion to suppress testimony about his alleged murder confession— given in a hospital emergency room, two hours after he had collapsed in a seizure in the police barracks, thus ending a thirteen-hour overnight interrogation that the trial court separately held to be unconstitutionally coercive. In convicting the defendant of murder, the trial court expressly credited the testimony about the hospital confession, but to that finding dropped a footnote stating that the evidence established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt even in the confession’s absence. The trial court then found the defendant guilty of murder based on all the evidence presented. The Connecticut Supreme Court relied on the footnoted disclaimer in concluding that any constitutional error in admitting the confession into evidence would have been harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The question presented is:

Whether, in a criminal bench trial for murder, a trial judge who admits over objection a defendant’s coerced confession to that offense may later insulate the constitutional error from meaningful appellate review by issuing a posttrial “finding” that the evidence would have established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at a trial conducted without the confession.

1. OnSeptember 16, 2025, the Washington Court of Appeals held that the State Medical Commission’s COVID-19 misinformation enforcement policy targeting physicians for their public viewpoint speech did not serve a compelling state interest and violated the First Amendment. Wilkinson v. Washington Medical Commission, 576 P.3d 1191 (Wash. Ct. App. 2025). The next day, the Ninth Circuit refused to reach the merits of Petitioners’ challenge to that same policy and affirmed dismissal under Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), finding that the policy served an “important state interest” justifying abstention. Appendix (“App.”) A at 14a. The questions presented are whether a federal court may abstain under Younger when a State appellate court has held the same enforcement policy unconstitutional, thereby eliminating any ongoing “important state interest” on which abstention could rest.

2. Whether physician-Petitioners subject to ongoing state disciplinary proceedings for their public speech satisfy all justiciability requirements and are entitled to federal adjudication when: (a) they face concrete enforcement actions establishing Article III standing; (b) the state’s own courts have declared the challenged enforcement policy unconstitutional; and (c) the only barrier to adjudication was Younger abstention, which the state court’s ruling has eliminated.

Ohio Revised Code § 2744.07(B) requires a political subdivision to indemnify an employee for certain qual- ifying judgments. This includes civil-rights judgments under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. See Ohio Rev. Code § 2744.09. The statute places no cap or limit on the indemnifica- tion and provides no mechanism for local subdivisions (which have limited authority to raise and spend money) to recelve necessary funds from the State. Miami Township, Ohio has been ordered to indemnify a $45 million Section 1983 judgment against a former employee — an amount more than 10 times the Town- ship’s General Fund annual budget. Miami Township argued below that, as applied, such an immediate and unconditional indemnification requirement amounts to an imposition of respondeat superior liability on the Township, even though this Court has held that § 1983 does not countenance respondeat superior hability for local government entities. See Monell v. Department of Soc. Servus., 486 U.S. 658, 691 (1978) (“[A] municipality cannot be held lable under § 1988 on a respondeat superior theory.”). The question presented is:

Whether, as applied, Ohio Revised Code § 2744.07(B) violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution because it creates de facto respondeat superior liability forbidden by Section 1983 and thereby is preempted by Section 1983.

1. Whether the only permissible exceptions to a general appeal waiver are for claims of ineffective assistance of counsel or that the sentence exceeds the statutory maximum.

2. Whether an appeal waiver applies when the sentencing judge advised the defendant that he has a right to appeal and the government did not object.

3. Whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits possession of firearms by a person who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance,” violates the Second Amendment as applied to an individual who did not admit that he was intoxicated at the time of the firearm possession when he pleaded guilty.

4, Whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(38)’s prohibition on firearm possession by “an unlawful user” of “any controlled substance” is unconstitutionally vague or should be construed 1n the narrowest manner possible to avoid unconstitutional applications.

5. Whether a claim of legal innocence premised on a post-plea but pre-sentenc- ing change in precedent constitutes a “fair and just reason” to allow withdrawal of a guilty plea under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(d)(2)(B).

6. Whether Congress may criminalize intrastate firearm possession based solely on the firearm crossing state lines at some point before the defendant came to possess it.

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1. Does the Kighth’s Circuit ruling that images of a minor dressing and using the toilet constitute “lascivious exhibition” in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) and 2256(2)(A)(v) conflict with the D.C. Circuit’s decision in United States v. Hillie and a plain and ordinary reading of the statutory definition?

2. Does the Eighth Circuit’s reliance on the Dost factors to define “lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area” under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2251(a) and 2256 conflict with the D.C. Circuit’s decision in United States v. Hillie, which rejects using the Dost factors?

3. Isa defendant that challenges the legal definition of what constitutes “lascivious exhibition” but does not dispute the facts at trial entitled to a two level reduction for acceptance of responsibility?

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There is widespread disagreement over how to instruct juries on the meaning of the phrase “lascivious exhibition” in child-pornography-related prosecutions. The question presented 1s:

Whether, in a non-production child-pornography prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(2), a trial court should define the phrase “lascivious exhibition” (codified in 18 U.S.C. § 2256(2)(A)(v)) by, inter alia, instructing the jury to consider (or not) a list of six optional factors (known as the Dost factors) that can be given whatever weight the jury decides, as well as whether the image “would appeal to persons who are sexually attracted to children.”

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