The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear President Donald Trump’s appeal seeking to overturn the $5 million civil verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and later defaming her, leaving the jury’s verdict intact.
In a brief order, the justices rejected Trump’s petition without further explanation, bringing to a close his effort to challenge the 2023 judgment stemming from Carroll’s allegations that Trump assaulted her inside the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in 1996.
The Supreme Court’s decision means the lower court ruling remains in place after Trump asked the nation’s highest court to review the case.
Trump has consistently denied Carroll’s allegations, and his legal team argued that the trial was fundamentally unfair because of several evidentiary decisions made during the proceedings.
Among the issues raised by Trump’s attorneys was the trial court’s decision to permit testimony from two additional women who accused Trump of sexually abusing them decades ago. According to the president’s legal team, allowing those witnesses to testify introduced what they described as highly inflammatory evidence that unfairly influenced the jury.
Trump has denied the allegations made by all three women.
His attorneys also argued that U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan incorrectly applied federal rules governing evidence throughout the trial. In court filings, the president’s legal team contended those rulings deprived Trump of a fair proceeding and imposed what they described as an unfair burden on the presidency.
Although Trump’s lawyers raised concerns about the impact on the office of the president, the jury’s verdict was issued before Trump returned to the White House.
Carroll’s legal team urged the Supreme Court to reject the appeal and allow the lower court’s judgment to stand.
By declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court leaves untouched the jury’s findings from the 2023 trial.
In addition to finding Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll, the jury also determined that he defamed her after publicly denying her allegations in 2022.
The ruling issued Monday pertains only to the $5 million civil judgment from that case.
Trump is separately appealing another judgment involving Carroll that resulted from a second trial. In that proceeding, a jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages after finding Trump liable for additional defamatory statements.
That separate appeal remains ongoing and has not yet reached the Supreme Court.
Monday’s order from the justices does not address the merits of the underlying claims or Trump’s separate appeal involving the larger defamation award. Instead, the court simply declined to take up the president’s challenge to the earlier judgment, allowing the lower court’s decision to remain in effect.
With the Supreme Court declining to intervene, Trump’s effort to overturn the $5 million verdict has come to an end, while his appeal of the separate $83.3 million defamation judgment continues through the court system.
The justices’ brief order concludes one chapter of the legal dispute between Trump and Carroll, while leaving unresolved the separate appeal arising from the second defamation verdict, which remains pending and has not yet been presented to the nation’s highest court.
