On Monday, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) turned down a request that former president Mr Donald Trump be taken off the ballot for the Republican presidential primary in Colorado, as America’s highest court continues to walk an unenviable political tightrope.

The US Supreme Court ruling meant that other like-minded states, such as Illinois and Maine, may not bar Mr Trump from the presidential election — an action that would likely have unleashed another round of legal and political mayhem.

Colorado’s Supreme Court had affirmed that Mr Trump engaged in an insurrection, by setting out to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and calling for his supporters to march on the Capitol.

The decision by the Colorado court, which Mr Trump appealed, was aimed at stopping him from running for the presidency for a third time, but created a moral dilemma for people opposed to the former president, yet preferred to see him removed by the ballot.

The SCOTUS has become the centre of the large number of cases involving Mr Trump, who is facing 91 criminal and other counts in Washington, DC; New York; Florida; and Georgia, for efforts to overturn the 2020 polls which elected Mr Joe Biden, and refusing to return classified documents after leaving office.

With each case that has gone against him Mr Trump has appealed, and critics have accused him of attempting to delay his trials until after a potential presidential win, when he could have the Department of Justice dispense with them.

All that is happening at a time when the SCOTUS is operating under a cloud of suspicion because Republican-appointed judges enjoy a super majority — six to three — and there are fears that they would be constrained to rule in favour of Mr Trump.

One of the most crucial cases before the Supreme Court is that in which Mr Trump has asked it to declare that he enjoys absolute immunity for actions taken while he was president between 2017 and 2021, which would effectively shut down the federal indictments against him.

Opponents who believed the SCOTUS would not have accepted the case, arguing that a ruling in Mr Trump’s favour would put him and future presidents above the law, have accused the court of supporting the former president’s delay tactics by taking the case.

They point to the court’s refusal, last December, of a request from the special prosecutor in Mr Trump’s January 6, 2021 insurrection case that it speeds up a decision on the immunity question, while accepting his appeal, thus slowing down the process, with elections drawing closer.

A sign of the difficulty facing the court is its decision to narrow the question from absolute immunity and to look specifically at whether Mr Trump enjoys limited immunity over his alleged actions leading to the January 6 events.

Yesterday’s ruling in favour of Mr Trump is not necessarily a bad thing for the SCOTUS. It may have made it easier for the judges to find against the immunity request, thus making it one-one in terms of a win for the parties, and thereby throwing it back to the lower courts for trial.

Of course, nothing that the Supreme Court does will satisfy all the parties, and it will find the going tough at a time when its public approval rating is at its lowest, especially after its Roe V Wade ruling against the hot-button topic of abortion.