More to read on the Mahmoud decision

•  I've subscribed to Chris Geidner at Law Dork, and I highly recommend him in general. Here's what he has on the Mahmoud decision. He starts by noting the inconsistency when it comes to the rights of parents:
  
  

  If the justices so concerned about parental rights on Friday meant that, they would have, one would think, taken a question relating to a similar issue — or, at least, sent it back to the Sixth Circuit to be reconsidered in light of Skrmetti and Mahmoud. 

  But that is not the message the court wanted to send on Monday. In four other cases relating to trans people’s lives, the court did send the cases back to be reconsidered in light of Skrmetti. All of those cases were cases in which the plaintiffs challenging anti-trans policies won in the appeals court, so it was the government defending those policies and asking the Supreme Court to take up the cases. 

  In all four cases — two involving Medicaid exclusions for gender-affirming medical care, one involving public teachers health insurance plans, and one involving birth certificate policies — the Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the appeals court decision below, and remanded “for further consideration in light of” Skrmetti. In other words, the Fourth Circuit, Ninth Circuit, and Tenth Circuit are to re-examine these cases given Skrmetti. 

  But, in the two cases where the states defending their anti-trans policies won below, the court let those stand — even though the plaintiffs had raised a question unresolved by Skrmetti.

  
  
  
• Elie Mystal writing in The Nation nails what the overwhelming theme is of Alito's majority decision. 
  

  The astute reader will note that I haven’t talked about the law in this case, but that’s because Alito doesn’t really talk about the law either. Alito offers no coherent reasoning for why these books violate the First Amendment rights of the bigoted parents, while others do not. His argument requires you to accept the premise that being gay or trans is facially immoral, and the objection of religious parents is obvious. If you do not accept those anachronistic premises, what logic there is in his opinion completely falls apart. Under Alito’s logic, any parent of any religion can object to any book for any reason.