You say the Court hasn’t struck down that much “because Congress hasn’t passed much.” But that’s not a neutral fact, it’s a symptom of the very chill we’re talking about. The threat of judicial obstruction is already shaping what gets proposed, how bills are drafted, and which fights leaders are willing to pick. That’s a kind of structural veto, whether the Court formally rules or not.
So no, “the Court won’t let us” may not always be said out loud, but it’s baked into the strategic choices being made. That’s why jurisdiction stripping matters. It doesn’t kill the Court; it just prevents five unelected lawyers from tossing out national policy every time entrenched interests feel threatened. It’s the necessary counterpart to filibuster reform: one removes the excuse not to act, the other removes the excuse that action is pointless.
This is a debate with a false premise. The main violence the Court does to statutes isn't to invalidate them. It's to interpret them to mean something different than what they are.
For instance, a section of the Voting Rights Act states:
"No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
And this rule is violated, per the statute, when:
it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of [a given race] in that[those] members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.
This is straightforward enough. The Supreme Court did not invalidate it. But they interpreted it oddly. For instance, is there anything in that statute to carve out a "mere inconvenience" exception? Of course not. "Equally open" is clear: there can't be rules to make it more difficult for one race to vote than another. Well, who cares about that? Not Alito.
Do you see any exception stating that "equal opportunity" should be measured against the voting practices in effect in 1982 when the VRA extension was first passed? This is maybe the most egregious statutory bullshit since the 19th century. Equal opportunity means equal opportunity. It doesn't mean that the state has to have the same rules for in-person voting, but allows white people to cast their votes via a mind-machine interface that registers their votes without them having to leave their couch. It means if the state loosens absentee ballot requirements for some, it has to do so for all.
How about anything in the text indicating that the number of voting options is relevant? If a state used to have one voting option, and it expanded it to three, but white people get a fourth -- yeah, that's illegal. It doesn't matter that minorities have more options than they used to. What matters is whether the options are equal.
So the Court didn't exactly "strike it down" per se, but in practice that's exactly what they did. They replaced the statute Congress wrote with another one they invented out of thin air.
Lots of statutes get nerfed into oblivion in this manner. The Clean Water Act, for instance, is now interpreted to apply only to wetlands that have a surface connection to navigable waterways. Nothing in the statute suggests that, and it's nonsense to assume that Congress was so idiotic as to pass a statute that would make no sense since most of the important chemistry happens underneath the surface. It didn't count as invalidation but again it was an invalidation in effect.