Mahmoud v. Taylor followed naturally from Skrmetti. Indeed, you could imagine a Court that decided Skrmetti the other would also flip Mahmoud. But given the fact that Skrmetti allowed the state to shield minors from gender transitioning, it makes sense that Mahmoud allowed parents to shield minors from information about gender transitioning.
Still, even though the outcome of Mahmoud was not hard to predict, the Court took a somewhat circuitous route to get there. First, the Court relied almost exclusively on Yoder, and used that precedent to get around Smith. Second, the Court, and Justice Thomas in particular, said almost nothing about substantive due process, even though the right to raise children was grounded in Lochner-era decisions like Meyer and Pierce. I'll address these two topics in other posts.
Here, I will discuss a third topic that requires some unpacking. How can Mahmoud be reconciled with Kennedy v. Bremerton School District? In particular, how can you line up the Court's treatment of coercion in these two recent decisions?
