The Supreme Court has rejected President Donald Trump’s request to reconsider its refusal to hear his appeal in the E. Jean Carroll case, leaving intact the $5 million judgment awarded to the columnist after a New York jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
The latest order closes another avenue for Trump in the 2023 case, although a separate and much larger $83.3 million defamation judgment involving Carroll remains the subject of another Supreme Court petition.
According to SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court initially declined Trump’s appeal on June 29. Carroll received the $5 million judgment, plus interest, on July 13 after Trump exhausted the available appeals associated with that verdict.
Trump’s attorneys had filed a petition for rehearing on July 8. The Supreme Court denied that request Monday.
Such requests face extremely long odds. SCOTUSblog noted that the court rarely grants petitions for rehearing, with the most recent instance occurring in 2018.
The dispute dates to a lawsuit Carroll filed in 2022. She alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York during the 1990s and later defamed her after she publicly made the allegation.
Trump has consistently denied Carroll’s accusation and has described it as a politically and financially motivated hoax.
The timing of Carroll’s civil action was made possible by New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which created a temporary one-year window allowing people alleging sexual offenses to file civil lawsuits that otherwise would have been barred by the statute of limitations. The legislation was signed into law in May 2022, before Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign that November, and the filing window opened later that month. Carroll filed her lawsuit on the first day of that window.
The unusual details surrounding Carroll’s account have also figured prominently in Trump’s public denials.
CNN reported in 2019 that Carroll was asked about similarities between her account and a 2012 episode of “Law & Order: SVU” that included a reference to a rape fantasy involving a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman.
“It tickled me to death,” Carroll told CNN when the similarity was raised. “It’s a great, huge coincidence, but it is a magnificent one, I must say.”
“It’s very ironic because ‘Law & Order’ happens to be one of my favorite shows,” she added. “I love ‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent.’”
Trump has also challenged Carroll’s recollection of what she was wearing at the time of the alleged encounter. In a 2024 social media post, he argued that a Donna Karan dress connected with Carroll’s account had not yet been manufactured during one of the years initially associated with the alleged incident.
“She originally claimed that the ‘event’ happened in 1994, and that she wore the Donna Karan dress on that day,” Trump wrote. “The problem is that New York Times Fact Checkers found the dress wasn’t even made by Donna Karan until long after 1994.”
He continued by arguing that Carroll could not identify the precise date of the alleged encounter and maintained that it never happened.
While the Supreme Court’s latest order leaves the $5 million judgment undisturbed, Trump and Carroll still have another major legal fight pending before the justices.
Trump has separately asked the Supreme Court to review an $83.3 million defamation judgment awarded to Carroll by a Manhattan jury in 2024. That award included $65 million in punitive damages and $18.3 million in compensatory damages.
That case concerns statements Trump made while serving his first term as president. He said Carroll was attempting to sell a book, characterized her allegations as false and argued that the book belonged “in the fiction section.”
His attorneys contend that the case presents a significant presidential-immunity question.
“This is the first case in our Nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a President for his conduct in office,” Trump’s attorneys argued in their Supreme Court petition.
They contend that the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the $83.3 million judgment without deciding whether presidential immunity protected Trump’s statements, which they characterized as responses from the White House to questions concerning allegations that directly affected his fitness for office.
The attorneys are relying in part on the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States. In that case, the justices held that presidents possess absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within their exclusive constitutional authority and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts.
Trump’s lawyers argue that the Second Circuit failed to properly account for that decision, noting the Supreme Court’s observation that “most of a president’s public communications are likely to fall comfortably within” the outer perimeter of official presidential responsibilities.
Whether that argument will persuade the justices remains unresolved. According to SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court is not expected to consider Trump’s petition involving the $83.3 million judgment until late September at the earliest.
