Supreme Court Declines to Review Trump Verdict in E. Jean Carroll Case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied former President Donald Trump’s request to review a New York jury’s 2023 verdict that held him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. The justices offered no explanation and no dissent was recorded, leaving the $5 million civil judgment intact.

The decision follows a 2024 ruling by a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the jury’s finding and rejected Trump’s claim that the trial was unfair because jurors heard evidence of his alleged past misconduct.

Trump, who has consistently denied the allegations, posted on his social-media platform that the Supreme Court “declined to ‘review’ a Fake Case brought against me.” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said the ruling “affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J. Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll.”

Carroll, a former Elle columnist, filed the lawsuit after publishing an excerpt from her memoir in 2019 alleging that Trump raped her in a Manhattan department-store dressing room in the 1990s. A separate defamation suit resulted in a 2024 Manhattan jury ordering Trump to pay $83.3 million, a judgment that his lawyers are also appealing.

Trump’s legal team has indicated they will seek Supreme Court review of the larger defamation award, arguing that his statements were protected by presidential immunity.