Supreme Court rejects Trump’s effort to overturn E. Jean Carroll verdict

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 29 declined to hear President Donald Trump’s appeal of a $5 million civil judgment against him after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, an Elle advice columnist during the mid-1990s. 

The justices denied Trump’s petition for certiorari without explanation or noted dissent, leaving intact the 2023 federal jury verdict from New York. 

A federal jury in 2023 found Trump liable after Carroll accused him of sexually abusing her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996 and of defaming her in 2022 after he denied her allegation and accused her of lying. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Jurors did not find Trump liable for rape, as Carroll had claimed.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that verdict in 2024, rejecting Trump’s argument that the trial was tainted by improper evidence. 

Carroll won a separate $83.3 million judgment in 2024 over additional defamation claims tied to Trump’s denials during his first presidency. Trump separately challenged that judgment, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it in 2025, according to court documents. The Hill reported that Trump signaled earlier in June he plans to ask the Supreme Court to review the separate $83.3 million award, including whether the damages were excessive.

Trump has repeatedly denied Carroll’s sexual abuse allegation and argued that the case was politically motivated. Carroll first publicly accused Trump in 2019 while he was serving his first term as president. 

Trump’s legal team had asked the Supreme Court to review the $5 million case, arguing among other points that certain evidence and trial rulings warranted a new trial. 

“It is deeply damaging to the fabric of our Republic for President Trump, in the midst of a historic presidency, to have to take his focus away from his singular and unique duties as Chief Executive to continue fighting against decades-old, false allegations and the myriad wrongs throughout this baseless case,” Trump’s lawyers wrote to the high court, according to The Hill.

Trump responded to the Supreme Court’s decision on Truth Social, calling Carroll’s lawsuit “a Fake Case” and saying he would “continue to fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength.”

“This 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 to be!” he wrote. “New York State created a Law, for an instant speck of time, going back many decades, in order to wrongfully ‘nab’ me. It was tailormade, and this Injustice cannot be allowed to stand!”

Trump appeared to be referring to New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a 2022 law that created a temporary one-year window for adults alleging sexual assault to file civil lawsuits even if the statute of limitations had expired. According to prior coverage of the case, the law allowed Carroll to pursue a civil sexual assault claim against Trump in 2022 that otherwise would have been time-barred.