US Supreme Court declines to revisit Trump appeal in E Jean Carroll case

A US Supreme Court order on Monday left standing a jury verdict that awarded writer E. Jean Carroll five million dollars in damages from President Donald Trump. According to NBC News, the justices declined—again—to take up Trump’s appeal of the judgment, after also rejecting it in June.

The case is one of the clearest examples of how America’s legal system can still impose costs on a sitting president without passing through Congress or an election. Carroll’s suit began as a federal case in New York City over an alleged 1996 sexual assault in a department store dressing room, but the damages at issue stem from defamation—statements Trump made after his first term, when he called her claim a “con job” and a “hoax,” and said he did not know her. That distinction matters because it ties the verdict to speech and personal liability rather than to the use of presidential powers, limiting the room for arguments that the presidency itself should shield a defendant.

Trump asked the court to reconsider its June refusal, a procedural long shot: the Supreme Court “almost never” revisits its own recent decisions, NBC notes. He has already paid the five million dollars plus interest, turning the dispute into something closer to a precedent fight than a collection problem. The court’s silence also leaves the lower-court outcome intact without creating a new nationwide rule—useful for a court that often prefers to avoid writing broad doctrines when it can dispose of a case by declining review.

The larger political relevance now shifts to the second Carroll case still headed toward the justices. In that separate matter, Carroll won an eighty-three million dollar judgment tied to comments Trump made during his first term as president, and the appeal has been slowed by litigation over whether Trump can claim immunity. The two cases together sketch a boundary line: when the statements are treated as personal attacks outside official duties, the presidency looks less like a legal bunker and more like a job title.

On Monday, the Supreme Court did not explain its decision. The five-million-dollar verdict remains in place, and the next, much larger Carroll judgment is still waiting in the pipeline.