Despite all of the attention that Dobbs has received, I think the decision is still poorly understood. Consider the divide between the majority and dissent in Mirabelli v. Bonta. In this case, parents raised a substantive due process claim that they had the right to direct the upbringing and medical care of their children. And the Court relied on substantive due process to grant relief. But as Justice Kagan pointed out in dissent, the per curiam opinion gave SDP the Voldemort treatment:
But the very phrasing the Court uses betrays the delicateness of the operation: Even in recognizing that parental right, the Court cannot quite bring itself to name the legal doctrine—it is, again, substantive due process—that provides the right's only basis.
Kagan writes further that the Court has, of late, expressed some skepticism of substantive due process:
