That strategy has now failed.
The Supreme Court rarely grants rehearing requests. Under the Court’s rules, a party generally must identify substantial intervening circumstances before the justices will revisit a previous denial. Trump’s lawyers attempted to make that argument by pointing toward a separate appeal involving a much larger judgment against the president.
At the center of the first case is a 2023 Manhattan federal jury verdict involving Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the 1990s. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegation.
The jury did not find Trump liable for rape, but it found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The Second Circuit later upheld the judgment, leaving the Supreme Court as Trump’s final major avenue for challenging that verdict.
Trump’s Supreme Court appeal had focused in part on evidence presented to the jury concerning allegations of other sexual misconduct involving him. His legal team argued that the admission of such evidence contributed to an unfair trial.
The justices ultimately declined to review those arguments.
After the Supreme Court rejected the initial appeal in June, the judgment moved toward final resolution. Court filings show that Carroll sought distribution of the $5 million judgment along with post-judgment interest.
Trump’s lawyers nevertheless continued fighting.
In their rehearing petition, attorneys pointed to a separate Carroll case involving statements Trump made while serving as president. That litigation concerns a second jury verdict requiring Trump to pay $83.3 million for defamation.
The two cases involve different claims and different statements, but Trump’s lawyers argued that the legal questions overlap. They maintained that the Supreme Court’s eventual treatment of presidential immunity in the separate matter could have implications for the earlier $5 million case.
“That is a paradigmatic reason to at least hold a petition,” the president’s lawyers wrote.
“When a forthcoming or pending case may affect the proper disposition of another petition, the Court may hold the related petition, and later resolve it in light of the lead case,” they added.
That argument did not persuade the justices.
The separate $83.3 million dispute remains alive. Trump filed another petition with the Supreme Court in July after the Second Circuit rejected his efforts to revive a presidential-immunity defense in that litigation. The Supreme Court docket lists that case as No. 26-141, with a response from Carroll due August 31.
The distinction between the two cases is important. The $5 million judgment involved statements Trump made in 2022 after Carroll publicly accused him of assault. The larger judgment arose from a separate defamation lawsuit concerning statements he made in 2019 while he was president.
Trump’s legal team has continued to characterize the Carroll litigation as politically motivated and has promised that the president will keep fighting.
“The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement. “President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again.”
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, meanwhile, said the Supreme Court’s latest action means the first jury verdict has reached the end of the road.
“We are pleased that the United States Supreme Court has declined again to hear this case,” Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said in a statement. “As a result, the jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court.”
For Trump, the ruling closes the Supreme Court chapter of the $5 million case. The president can still pursue his separate challenge to the $83.3 million verdict, meaning his broader legal fight with Carroll is not yet finished.
But Monday’s order is significant: the Supreme Court has now rejected Trump’s attempt to reopen the first case, leaving that jury verdict standing after years of litigation and appeals.
The legal battle may therefore be entering a new phase, with attention shifting from the $5 million judgment to the unresolved $83.3 million appeal—and to whether the Supreme Court will ultimately take up Trump’s arguments concerning presidential immunity in that separate case.
For now, however, the justices have made their position on the first verdict clear: they will not reconsider their decision to leave it in place.
