The Supreme Court refused on Monday to hear Donald Trump’s appeal in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation case, leaving intact a 2023 jury verdict and a $5 million civil judgment.
The move keeps alive the finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll and then defamed her after his first term in office, when he dismissed her claims as a “con job” and a “hoax.” For Carroll, it means the judgment that followed years of litigation remains in force for now.
Carroll first made her allegations in 2019 and filed her federal lawsuit three years later in Manhattan, saying Trump assaulted her in a department store dressing room in 1996. The case has moved through the courts for years, and the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict in 2024.
Trump’s lawyers tried to undo that result by arguing Carroll never reported the incident to police, there were no witnesses, and she waited until he was president to sue so she could “maximize political injury to him and profit for herself.” They also challenged Lewis Kaplan’s decision to allow testimony from Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff and to show jurors the “Access Hollywood” tape, but Carroll’s lawyers said the evidence was properly admitted.
The high court’s refusal does not explain its reasoning, but it leaves the 2023 verdict standing and closes off Trump’s effort to overturn it through that appeal. The $5 million judgment remains in place, though the case’s separate defamation fight is still moving through appeal and Trump is still pressing a presidential immunity argument there.
That leaves Carroll with a judgment that has survived trial and appellate review, and Trump with a case he can no longer ask the Supreme Court to erase. The larger battle over the separate $83.3 million award is not over, but Monday’s decision made one point unmistakable: the verdict in this case is not going away.
