SCOTUS Denies Trump Request to Appeal of E. Jean Carroll Lawsuit

The Supreme Court denied a request from President Donald Trump to reconsider his appeal of writer E. Jean Carroll’s $5 million lawsuit on Monday.

The order on Monday comes after the Supreme Court declined to take up the president’s argument in June, per the Hill:

The new, one-sentence order denies it again without comment or any noted dissents. Rehearings at the Supreme Court are virtually never allowed. Court rules prescribe that they’re only permitted when substantial, “intervening circumstances” take place.

The Supreme Court in June declined to take Trump’s appeal regarding Carroll’s first defamation lawsuit against him, for which she was awarded $5 million. Those funds were then transferred to Carroll’s law firm.

In 2024, prior to the presidential election, a jury awarded writer E. Jean Carroll $83 million in damages after she argued he defamed her with statements he made in refuting her allegations of him sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the early 1990s. The president has repeatedly denied the allegations and has “tried unsuccessfully to substitute the United States as a defendant and to raise a claim of presidential immunity,” per ABC News.

The second defamation case has raised a barrage of legal questions regarding statements made by Trump as president.

“[The DOJ] hopes to invoke a 1988 law called the Westfall Act. Aimed at protecting federal employees, the law allows the Justice Department to substitute itself as the defendant when a lawsuit concerns something a government employee did in the scope of their jobs,” noted the Hill.

That pending case has not yet been decided and is proceeding on a slower timeline.

“We are pleased that the United States Supreme Court has declined again to hear this case,” Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said in a statement. “As a result, 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.”