I think SCOTUS will take this case. Swing votes are of course Kennedy and Roberts...Almost impossible to predict outcome but the pessimist in me thinks one of the two will uphold the “intent” of the law.
You may be right, they may not have the guts to rule in a way that allows the Democrats to suffer the consequences of their own duplicity.
If they enacted the law the intention of which was to make every citizen buy a pony, and that law included a penalty for people who refused, and the penalty was that they got a skunk from the government, the court would say the skunk clause could be ignored because the the intent was to provide everyone with a pony.