The transgender case wasn't heard, it appears to me, because the Court of Appeals had concluded that the school was willing to accommodate girls concerned about bathroom privacy by creating additional single-occupancy bathrooms. Privacy interests, therefore, were considered and balanced.
But the author is correct that the heartbeat bills were designed to goad the SCOTUS to act, and that this effort will certainly fail. The tell here isn't the transgender case, but the Indiana abortion bill whose unconstitutionality (as to its ban on sex-selection, etc., abortions) was allowed to stand. The Court is not going to re-visit its undue burden analysis in the case of a clearly unconstitutional bill. It will let the Courts of Appeal strike down such laws, and allow such rulings to stand.
Maybe, just maybe, it will look at undue burden in the context of a State's 20-week abortion ban. But first it needs to conclude that the State has any legitimate interest at all in restricting abortion. That's problematic in view of the Indiana case, where Justice Thomas's 10-page dissent arguing that the State has a vital interest in curbing the use of abortion for eugenics purposes fell on apparent deaf ears.
