In a quiet, un-notated order that carried the weight of an absolute legal finality, the United States Supreme Court declined to step into the long-running legal battle between President Donald Trump and journalist E. Jean Carroll. By refusing to hear the president’s appeal, the nation’s highest court effectively closed the book on his bid to overturn a landmark 2023 civil verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
The high court issued no accompanying statement or legal explanation for its decision. The silence from the bench leaves intact a New York federal jury’s order requiring Trump, now 80, to pay Carroll $5 million in damages—a historic ruling that marked the first time a sitting or former U.S. president was held legally accountable for sexual assault.
The decision prompted an immediate, blistering response from the president. Turning to his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump fiercely criticized the court’s refusal to intervene, framing the entire litigation as a politically motivated assault on the presidency itself.
“Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to ‘review’ a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met,” Trump wrote, dismissing an existing photograph of the two together as an incidental “decades old celebrity photo line.”
He continued by promising to fight what he termed “Weaponization and Lawfare,” claiming the case was a broader assault on the American political system. “New York State created a Law, for an instant speck of time, going back many decades, in order to wrongfully ‘nab’ me,” he asserted, referencing the legislative window that allowed the civil lawsuit to be brought forward. “It was tailormade, and this Injustice cannot be allowed to stand!”
The Dressing Room on Fifth Avenue
To understand how a civil dispute reached the steps of the Supreme Court requires looking back to 2019, when Carroll, now 82, first leveled her allegations in her memoir, What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.
The legal path opened widely in November 2022 due to New York’s Adult Survivors Act. The law created a temporary, one-year lookback window that paused the standard statute of limitations, allowing adult survivors of sexual abuse a chance to file civil lawsuits for assaults that had occurred decades prior.
Carroll’s lawsuit detailed a harrowing encounter from the mid-1990s inside the luxury Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue. According to her complaint, a chance encounter involving playful banter took a dark turn when Trump cornered her inside a dressing room, pinned her against a wall, and assaulted her.
Trump consistently and vehemently denied the allegations from the start. In public statements, he maintained he had absolutely no idea who Carroll was, declaring in one interview that “she’s not my type” and claiming she fabricated the entire story to drive book sales. Those very denials formed the bedrock of Carroll’s subsequent defamation claims; she argued his public insults severely damaged her professional reputation as a longtime magazine columnist.
When the case finally went before a New York jury in 2023, the panelists found Trump liable for sexual abuse—concluding he had forcefully assaulted Carroll, though stopping short of finding him liable for the specific legal definition of rape under New York law. They also concluded he had definitively defamed her.
A Continuing Battle Beyond the Verdict
The $5 million judgment is only a fraction of the total financial exposure Trump faces regarding Carroll. A subsequent 2024 defamation trial, which focused on additional disparaging remarks Trump made while serving in the White House, resulted in a staggering $83.3 million jury award in Carroll’s favor.
Despite the overwhelming financial penalties, Trump has refused to temper his rhetoric, frequently using campaign rallies and press conferences to mock Carroll and reiterate his innocence.
“I first heard about it in the White House, and of course, I denied the story because it’s not true,” Trump stated during a press conference. “I have no idea who the woman is, and I never met her… I should be suing her for defamation.”
The battlefield has also spilled into federal agencies. The Department of Justice initiated a criminal probe into whether Carroll misled investigators regarding the outside financial backing of her civil litigation. While Carroll maintained she paid her legal fees directly, reports surfaced that an organization funded by billionaire LinkedIn co-founder and prominent Democratic donor Reid Hoffman had provided financial support to her legal team.
With the Supreme Court removing itself from the equation, the core 2023 verdict stands secure. For Carroll, the high court’s refusal marks the end of a long judicial gauntlet, validating a jury’s conclusion that occurred in a dressing room thirty years ago.
If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, confidential support is available. Contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit rainn.org for 24/7 online assistance.