Zalman Rothschild (Yeshiva University – Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law) has posted Vaccines and ‘Religious Parental Rights’ (Harv. L. Rev. F. (forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In Miller v. McDonald, the Supreme Court vacated a decision upholding a vaccine mandate for lacking religious exemptions, remanding for reconsideration in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor—a case about parental opt-outs from public school curricula. This Essay argues that the GVR signals a doctrinal shift. By treating Mahmoud as relevant to a paradigmatic public-health mandate, the Court has invited lower courts to extend religious exemption claims from what children are taught to what the state requires to keep them safe, quietly inverting a century-old premise in free exercise jurisprudence. The Essay also examines the GVR as a vehicle through which the Court communicates consequential doctrinal directions through orders that lack the reasoning lower courts need to carry them out.
Recommended.