The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Trump's final bid to overturn a $5 million jury verdict in the E. Jean Carroll civil case, ending years of legal challenges while a far larger $83 million judgment remains unresolved.
The justices declined Trump's petition asking them to reconsider their earlier refusal to hear his appeal, a procedural move so rare that no such request has been granted since the 1960s. The court offered no explanation and no justice filed a written dissent, ABC News reported.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing throughout the case. The $5 million had already been paid after the court first turned down his appeal in June. Carroll's lawyers then moved to have the funds, held in escrow during the appeals process, disbursed to Carroll.
The case traces back to Carroll's 2019 public accusation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in Manhattan during the mid-1990s. Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, brought the civil suit years later.
In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and for defaming her in a 2022 social media post in which he called her allegations "a Hoax and a lie" and wrote, "This woman is not my type!" The jury deliberated for roughly three hours before returning the $5 million award, National Review reported.
Trump denied the accusation, describing Carroll's claims as a hoax and politically motivated. His legal team challenged the verdict on procedural grounds, arguing that the trial judge improperly allowed testimony from two other women who alleged sexual misconduct by Trump.
That argument failed to move the Supreme Court, twice.
Monday's order closes the book on the $5 million case, but a much larger fight remains. In a separate 2024 trial, Trump was ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegations while serving as president.
Trump and the Justice Department are now separately asking the Supreme Court to toss that second verdict, arguing that comments Trump made about Carroll in 2019 were "official" presidential statements shielded by immunity. The justices are expected to decide later this year whether to take up the case.
That immunity argument carries far more constitutional weight than the procedural challenges Trump raised in the $5 million matter. If the court agrees to hear it, the case could set significant precedent on how far presidential immunity extends into civil defamation disputes, a question that cuts across administrations and parties.
For now, the $5 million is paid, the appeal is exhausted, and the larger question waits. Whether the justices treat the $83 million case differently will say a great deal about where the court draws the line between a president's public statements and personal legal exposure.
