The Supreme Court on Monday declined a request by President Trump to review a $5 million civil judgment against him after a jury found in 2023 that he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll.<\/p>\n
The announcement by the justices did not include any reasoning, and no public dissents were noted.<\/p>\n
A second case that arose out of Ms. Carroll\u2019s allegations also could be headed to the Supreme Court. In January 2024, a separate jury ordered<\/a> Mr. Trump to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million in damages for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape.<\/p>\n Lawyers for Mr. Trump have said they plan to ask<\/a> that the justices also hear that case.<\/p>\n Still, Monday\u2019s decision is a major blow to Mr. Trump and is most likely the end of his legal efforts to contest the jury verdict finding that he assaulted Ms. Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court\u2019s announcement came after the court ruled in February that the president had overstepped his authority by issuing sweeping tariffs using emergency powers. That decision, which dealt a sharp blow to Mr. Trump\u2019s economic and foreign policy strategy, drew sharp criticism from the president, who referred to the justices who voted against the tariffs as \u201cfools and lap dogs\u201d and a \u201cdisgrace to our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to the decision on Monday, Mr. Trump posted on social media, calling Ms. Carroll\u2019s lawsuit \u201ca Fake Case.\u201d He added that he would \u201ccontinue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength.\u201d<\/p>\n In his post, Mr. Trump accused New York State of creating a law \u201cfor an instant speck of time, going back many decades, in order to wrongfully \u2018nab\u2019 me.\u201d He was referring to a 2022 New York law that gave adults who claimed to have been sexually assaulted a one-year window to sue, even if the period for doing so under the statute of limitation had expired. Ms. Carroll, an ardent supporter of the law, sued after it was enacted.<\/p>\n Ms. Carroll, 82, writing on Substack, declared: \u201cWE WON! THIS WIN IS FOR EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD!\u201d<\/p>\n Her lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said the decision \u201caffirms once and for all the jury\u2019s unanimous verdict that President Donald J. Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll. His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed, and today\u2019s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions.\u201d<\/p>\n Got a news tip about the courts?\u00a0If you have information to share about the Supreme Court or other federal courts, please contact us.<\/p>\n In May 2023, a federal jury in New York found the president liable<\/a> for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll.<\/p>\n The jury agreed that Ms. Carroll, a former magazine writer, had sufficiently shown that Mr. Trump sexually abused her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store when the two crossed paths in the 1990s. Further, the jury found that Mr. Trump had defamed Ms. Carroll by posting a statement on social media calling her case \u201ca complete con job\u201d and \u201ca Hoax and a lie.\u201d Throughout, Mr. Trump denied Ms. Carroll\u2019s allegations.<\/p>\n Among other evidence, the jury heard claims by two women in addition to Ms. Carroll that Mr. Trump had assaulted them, and an excerpt from the infamous \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d tape in which Mr. Trump can be heard bragging that he had a practice of grabbing and kissing women without consent.<\/p>\n After the verdict, Mr. Trump appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asserting, among other things, that the trial judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, erred by allowing the evidence of the two women and the tape excerpt to be shown to the jury.<\/p>\n In December 2024, a three-judge appeals court panel upheld the jury\u2019s verdict<\/a>, finding that Mr. Trump failed to show that the evidence had harmed his rights to a fair trial.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump then asked the justices to weigh in and find that the trial court had erred.<\/p>\n