Mirabelli v Skemetti
I just noticed a footnote in Justice Kagan’s dissent in Mirabelli.
In FN 3, Kagan draws a comparison to Skrmetti. In that case, parents challenged Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors and raised a SDP claim grounded in the exact same parental rights precedents like Pierce, Parham etc.. asserting their right to make medical decisions for their children. The Court granted cert but explicitly limited review to equal protection, refusing to even hear the SDP claim.
Fast forward to Mirabelli, and the Court not only entertains the parental SDP claim but uses the emergency docket to grant relief
What’s the principled distinction? If parental rights under SDP are robust enough to override California’s school notification policy on an emergency basis, why weren’t they worth hearing when Tennessee was directly blocking parents from accessing medical treatment for their kids,which seems like an even more direct intrusion into parental medical decision-making?
They also never addressed this part of her critique.