The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review President Donald Trump's appeal of the $5 million verdict in the E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse and defamation case, leaving the judgment intact and exhausting his options at the nation's highest court. Trump fired back on Truth Social within hours, calling the lawsuit "weaponization" and pledging to fight on.
The decision, issued without explanation, as is standard practice, means Trump must pay the $5 million a Manhattan federal jury awarded Carroll in May 2023 after finding him liable for sexual abuse and defamation. It marks the end of a legal road that wound through trial courts, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and eleven separate delays at the Supreme Court level before the justices finally refused to take up the case.
A separate $83.3 million defamation verdict, handed down by a second jury in January 2024, remains under appeal in lower courts. Together, the two awards total $88.3 million.
Trump did not wait long to respond. In a morning post on Truth Social, he cast the case as a politically motivated attack enabled by a New York law he says was designed to target him.
"Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to 'review' a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met (Decades old celebrity photo line, standing with her husband, does not count!)"
He continued, framing the litigation as a threat not just to himself but to the office of the presidency.
"I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength. This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another President, or Candidate to be!"
Trump also took aim at the Adult Survivors Act, the New York State law signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2022 that created a one-year window allowing alleged victims of sexual assault to file civil suits regardless of how much time had passed. Carroll filed her lawsuit under that window.
"New York State created a Law, for an instant speck of time, going back many decades, in order to wrongfully 'nab' me. It was tailormade, and this Injustice cannot be allowed to stand! Thank you for your attention to this matter."
Whatever one thinks of Trump's tone, the underlying legal question he raises, whether a retroactive litigation window can be weaponized against a political figure, is not frivolous. The Adult Survivors Act opened the courthouse door to claims stretching back decades, claims that under ordinary statute-of-limitations rules would have been time-barred long ago. That a sitting president now faces an $88.3 million liability rooted in allegations from 1996 ought to trouble anyone who cares about the integrity of the legal system, regardless of party.
The case against Trump moved fast once New York gave it an opening. In 2022, the state enacted the Adult Survivors Act. Carroll filed suit. By May 2023, a jury found Trump liable and ordered him to pay $5 million.
Then came the second case. In January 2024, a separate civil jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million, including $65 million in punitive damages, over Trump's social media commentary about the allegations, as the New York Post reported.
Trump's legal team challenged the evidentiary rulings from the original 2023 trial, arguing that the trial judge improperly admitted the Access Hollywood tape and testimony from two other women who accused Trump of sexual assault. They contended this evidence prejudiced the jury. Newsmax reported that the appeals court rejected those arguments by an 8, 2 vote.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the $5 million verdict in late 2024. The Supreme Court then rescheduled consideration of Trump's appeal eleven times, Just The News tracked each postponement, before finally declining to hear the case Monday.
Trump's attorneys had argued in their January Supreme Court filing that the case imposed an extraordinary burden on a sitting president. As they put it: "It is deeply damaging to the fabric of our republic for President Trump, in the midst of a historic presidency, to have to take his focus away from his singular and unique duties as chief executive."
In their petition, Trump's lawyers also argued that Carroll's claims were politically timed. They wrote that "Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th President, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself."
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll's lead attorney, treated Monday's ruling as a final chapter. Fox News reported her statement:
"Today's Supreme Court decision affirms once and for all the jury's 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's ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions."
Carroll's legal team had countered Trump's evidentiary arguments by asserting that any contested evidence did not affect the outcome given the strength of the overall case.
The $83.3 million defamation verdict, however, remains in play. That case is still working through lower courts, meaning the larger financial exposure has not yet been resolved.
Monday's Carroll ruling did not arrive in isolation. The Washington Examiner noted that the Supreme Court also blocked Trump from firing Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook on the same day, ruling he had denied her due process. Two adverse rulings from the nation's highest court in a single session is a notable development for any president.
The pattern extends well beyond the Supreme Court. Federal judges, some with deep ties to the political opposition, have repeatedly intervened against Trump administration actions. One Clinton-appointed judge froze Trump's $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, while others have blocked executive actions on everything from immigration enforcement to domestic spending.
The judiciary has become a primary arena for political combat against this administration. Whether the issue is a federal judge blocking SNAP benefit reforms or a decades-old civil claim revived by a retroactive state law, the courtroom has replaced the ballot box as the preferred venue for Trump's opponents.
That reality makes Trump's "lawfare" framing resonate with millions of Americans who see a legal system increasingly tilted toward politically convenient outcomes. When a state legislature can pass a one-year litigation window, a plaintiff can file a claim about events from the mid-1990s, and a jury can award $88.3 million, all while the defendant happens to be the sitting president, the system invites scrutiny.
The Supreme Court itself has not been uniformly hostile to Trump's legal positions. The justices have backed the administration's authority on immigration enforcement in other recent decisions. But the Carroll case presented a different posture, a civil dispute between private parties, filtered through state law, and the Court chose not to intervene.
Several questions hang over the case even after Monday's ruling. The $83.3 million defamation verdict is still being contested. Whether Trump has paid any portion of the $5 million award, or whether stays remain in effect, is not publicly clear from available filings.
The Supreme Court offered no written explanation for declining to hear the case, which is standard procedure. That silence leaves open the question of whether any justices considered the evidentiary arguments meritorious or whether the petition failed to attract the four votes needed for certiorari.
Trump's legal team has signaled it will continue to challenge the broader Carroll litigation, though the avenues for contesting the $5 million verdict appear to be closed. The larger defamation award, more than sixteen times the original verdict, remains the main financial battleground.
The broader question raised by ongoing clashes between the political branches and the judiciary is whether the courts can maintain public legitimacy when they become the instrument of choice for one side's political strategy. That question predates Trump, but the Carroll saga sharpens it.
The Adult Survivors Act may have been written in neutral language, but its most prominent beneficiary was E. Jean Carroll. The law opened a one-year window. Carroll walked through it. A jury delivered $88.3 million in combined verdicts against a sitting president over allegations nearly three decades old.
None of this happened in a criminal court. No prosecutor brought charges. No grand jury returned an indictment. A civil plaintiff, aided by a retroactive state statute and a sympathetic jury pool in Manhattan, achieved what no criminal proceeding ever attempted.
Trump calls it tailored. His critics call it justice. But the precedent it sets, that a state legislature can rewrite the rules of litigation to reach decades into the past, and that the resulting verdicts can survive every level of federal appeal, will outlast this president and this plaintiff alike.
When the courthouse becomes the preferred weapon of political opposition, everyone should worry about who gets targeted next.