Supreme Court again rejects Trump's bid to overturn E. Jean Carroll verdict

The Supreme Court has closed a door that Donald Trump has tried to pry open twice now. On Monday, the justices declined for the second time to reconsider their earlier rejection of his bid to overturn a civil jury verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. The decision came without explanation—the court simply listed it among dozens of other cases it would not hear. For Trump, it means the $5 million damages award he paid to Carroll in July is now final, unreviewable, beyond the reach of further legal challenge.

The case began in the 1990s, when Carroll, then a magazine columnist, alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store dressing room. For decades, the claim remained largely unheard. Then, in 2022, Trump posted on Truth Social that Carroll's account was false and that she was "not my type." That post became the basis for a defamation claim. A federal jury found him liable on both counts—the original assault and the subsequent public denial that branded her a liar. The verdict was rendered in a civil trial, not a criminal one, but the weight of it was unmistakable.

Trump's legal team argued that the judge had erred by allowing jurors to see the Access Hollywood tape from 2005, in which Trump was recorded using crude language while discussing groping and kissing women without consent. The lawyers contended this evidence poisoned the jury's perception of their client and should never have been admitted. The Supreme Court disagreed—or rather, chose not to engage with the argument at all. In June, the justices rejected his first appeal. When Trump's team filed what legal experts describe as an unusual and long-shot request to reconsider that rejection, the court declined again.

Carroll, now 82, responded to the decision with a statement that carried both humility and steel. "One old lady can not make a difference," she wrote in a newsletter. "But when that old lady has a team of the most brilliant attorneys in America, and when that old lady has the support of women around the world, that old lady can do the impossible." Her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, was more direct: the jury's verdict "is now final and cannot be challenged in any court."

Yet the legal fight is not entirely over. Trump still faces a separate $83.3 million defamation verdict from Carroll, also stemming from his public denials of her allegations. That case remains pending before the Supreme Court. Trump's lawyers have argued that he cannot be sued for statements he made while serving as president—a claim rooted in presidential immunity doctrine. The court has not yet ruled on whether it will hear that case.

In his earlier response to the June rejection, Trump characterized the entire legal proceeding as "weaponisation and lawfare," framing it not as a dispute between two parties but as an attack on the presidency itself. "This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for," he wrote. He vowed to continue fighting. The Supreme Court's silence on Monday—its refusal even to explain why it would not reconsider—suggests the justices saw little merit in revisiting ground they had already covered. For Carroll, the moment represents a rare victory in a legal system that has often moved slowly on her behalf. For Trump, it represents a limit to how far the courts will go in undoing what a jury has decided.