WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has turned away President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn a jury verdict finding that he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll at a New York City department store in the mid-1990s and subsequently defamed her.
The court issued a short, unexplained order — which is standard practice when declining to hear a case — and no justices publicly noted a dissent.
Trump’s legal team had argued that the $5 million verdict was tainted by what they called “highly inflammatory” rulings on evidence, particularly the judge’s decision to allow two additional women to testify that Trump had sexually abused them decades ago. Trump has denied the allegations made by all three women.
His attorneys contended that the judge violated federal evidence rules and framed the ongoing legal battle as an unnecessary burden on a sitting president — even though the verdict was reached before Trump returned to the White House.
“This mistreatment of a President cannot be allowed to stand,” attorney Justin D. Smith wrote in court filings. Trump has since nominated Smith to serve as a federal appeals court judge.
The ruling comes as the Supreme Court is issuing decisions in several major cases this term, many of which are closely tied to Trump’s policy agenda. Trump has previously and publicly expressed frustration over court losses, including unusually personal criticism of the majority after it struck down his sweeping tariffs imposed under an emergency powers law.
Carroll’s attorneys had asked the justices to leave the case alone, arguing that the testimony from the other women was relevant given the similar nature of the accusations and that the trial judge’s rulings were consistent with legal standards applied in courts across the country. “This question is not worthy of review,” wrote attorney Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan.
Carroll, who worked for years as an advice columnist and previously hosted a television talk show, testified during a 2023 trial that Trump transformed a chance friendly meeting in the spring of 1996 into a violent sexual assault inside a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a high-end retailer located across from Trump Tower in Manhattan. The jury also found Trump liable for defaming Carroll when he publicly denied her account in 2022.
The Associated Press has a policy of not identifying individuals who report sexual assault unless they have chosen to speak publicly — as Carroll has done.
In a separate legal proceeding, a jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million following a second defamation trial. Trump is appealing that ruling as well, though it has not yet reached the Supreme Court.
Trump has managed to escape some other major court judgments, including a New York civil fraud penalty exceeding $500 million that was thrown out by a state appeals court. The Supreme Court also granted him broad immunity from criminal prosecution in 2024, though it later narrowly rejected his attempt to block sentencing in his New York hush money case.
