Are sheriffs 'final policymakers' under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for their counties with regard to law enforcement?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In the Ninth Circuit, the precepts of federalism often count for very little. They are, at most, but minor hurdles to be vaulted over by federal courts on their way to superimposing on State and local governmental institutions the courts’ preferences as to how those institutions should be structured and run. Here, the Ninth Circuit and the District Court have disregarded and misapplied Arizona law and this Court’s precedents to find Arizona’s sheriffs to be “final policymakers” for their respective counties and hold Maricopa County, Arizona (“the County”) responsible for law enforcement actions over which the County had no control. The courts below have saddled the County with substantial cost and other burdens for conduct of former Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio (“the Sheriff’) and his deputies found to have been contumacious, without regard to limitations on the County’s authority to provide such funding and without regard to legally condoned processes by which such funding could be obtained. Further, massive usurpations of the prerogatives of the Sheriff have been engineered and imposed, apparently on the theory that constitutional constraints on federal judicial disappear whenever the courts exercise their contempt powers. The questions presented are: 1. Applying the analytical mandates of McMillian v. Monroe County, Alabama, 520 U.S. 781 (1997), to county-level governmental institutions established under Arizona law, are sheriffs “final policymakers” under 42 U.S.C. § ii 1983 for their counties with regard to the conduct of law enforcement matters? 2. May federal courts, consistent with the Guarantee Clause and the Tenth Amendment, compel local governmental institutions to do things they are not authorized to do under State law? 3. Are federal courts at liberty, in exercising their contempt powers, to ignore the precepts of federalism, notwithstanding this Court’s decision in Rizzo v. Goode, 432 U.S. 362 (1976)?