The United States Supreme Court has denied, for a second time, President Donald Trump’s request to overturn a federal civil jury verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E Jean Carroll.
The court’s August order list, released on Monday, rejected Trump’s request to reconsider its previous June decision denying his appeal of the 2023 verdict. The order offered no explanation, which is typical when justices deny requests for rehearing during a recess. The list denied 33 requests in total.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that the jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court. Carroll collected the $5 million judgment plus interest after the Supreme Court first declined to hear Trump’s appeal in June. The damages payout was ultimately about $5.8 million.
Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine who is now 82, sued Trump over an alleged attack in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. The defamation portion of the case stemmed from a 2022 post on Truth Social in which Trump called Carroll’s claim a hoax and a con job, and said she was not his type.
Trump’s legal arguments rejected twice
Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. He argued that the judge who oversaw the civil trial improperly allowed evidence that affected the jury’s perceptions of him. In his initial petition to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers argued that Carroll’s lawyers should not have let jurors see the 2005 Access Hollywood footage, in which Trump used crude language while discussing groping and kissing women.
Legal experts described Trump’s request for reconsideration as an unusual long-shot legal maneuver. The court rarely grants such requests. Trump has yet to comment on the latest decision.
In a lengthy Truth Social post following the earlier June decision, Trump vowed to continue battling what he called the “weaponisation and lawfare case” and the “ridiculous” claim of defamation. He wrote that the case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another president or candidate.
Carroll thanked her legal team and supporters. “One old lady can not make a difference,” she wrote in a newsletter sent on Monday. “But when that old lady has a team of the most brilliant attorneys in America, and when that old lady has the support of women around the world, that old lady can do the impossible.”
Separate $83.3 million case still pending
Carroll has won two separate defamation suits against Trump. The case that led to the $5 million verdict concerned his statements in 2022, made after he had left office. A second defamation suit, filed in 2019, stemmed from Trump’s denials of Carroll’s rape claim, in which he called her a nut job and said she was not his type.
A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that second case in 2024. Trump has also asked the Supreme Court to overturn that verdict, arguing that presidential immunity protects statements he made while he was president. The top court has not made a decision in that case. Trump has been engaged in litigation with Carroll since 2019, when she published an excerpt from her memoir alleging that Trump had raped her in 1996.