was wrong, it is necessary to identify the pillars on which the state-court judgment rests. To do this, we consider the questions of state law that the state court was obligated to reach in order to render its decision. Our decision in Ernst v. Child & Youth Services, 108 F.3d 486 (3d Cir.1997), illustrates this process. In that case, a state child welfare agency filed suit in state court against the grandmother of a child, seeking to deprive the grandmother of custody and to have the child placed in foster care. The state court held that the child was “dependent” under Pennsylvania law, meaning that the child was “without proper parental care or control,” and further determined that foster care would be in “the best interests of the child.” Ernst, 108 F.3d at 492. The grand 98) (<HOLDING>). B. In the second situation discussed above,
holding that the plaintiffs claims against volkswagen and others did not necessarily raise a federal question since they were also based on the assertion that the plaintiffs vehicle did not comply with state law holding that a plaintiffs suit in federal court which sought an injunction against future denials of petitions for readmission to the pennsylvania bar without certain procedural safeguards was not barred by rookerfeldman because it sought only prospective relief and thus would not prevent the enforcement of the pennsylvania supreme courts order denying the plaintiffs petition for readmission holding rookerfeldman inapplicable where the district court could and did find that the plaintiffs constitutional claims had merit without also finding that the state court erred holding that rookerfeldman did not bar the plaintiffs federal action where a pennsylvania state court had previously dismissed the plaintiffs petition for review of an agencys decision for failure to comply with the pennsylvania rules of appellate procedure since the extent of the plaintiffs compliance with those rules had no bearing on the merits of the plaintiffs constitutional claims holding that the district court properly dismissed the plaintiffs asapplied challenge to the constitutionality of the tennessee collateral review statutes under rookerfeldman