The highest court in the U.S. has rejected President Donald Trump's appeal for the second time in the case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, confirming his liability for sexual assault and defamation with damages of $83 million.
On Monday, August 17, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court for the second time rejected President Donald Trump's request to overturn the verdict holding him liable for the sexual assault and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, a former journalist and columnist. This decision came after Trump and the Department of Justice asked the high court in July to intervene in the case.
The rejected appeal concerned the jury's verdict of $5 million, which found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in the mid-1990s and for subsequent defamation. In 2022, the jury determined that Trump had defamed Carroll when he denied her allegations.
Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, expressed satisfaction with the court's decision. "As a result, the unanimous jury verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court," Kaplan said in a statement reported by the Hindustan Times.
Carroll first publicly made allegations in her memoirs in 2019 that Trump sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in 1996. The store is located across from Trump Tower. During the 2023 trial, Carroll testified that Trump turned a friendly encounter from the 1990s into a violent assault in the dressing room.
Trump denied the allegations, claiming he never met Carroll, that she was "not his type," and that she fabricated everything to promote her book. Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against him specifically because of those statements.
In a separate proceeding, a civil court jury already ruled that Trump was liable for sexual assault and defamation, after which he paid Carroll $5.6 million (€4.8 million) last month. Trump paid that amount shortly after the Supreme Court in June 2026 declined to take up his appeal.
Trump and the Department of Justice are also asking the Supreme Court to overturn a second verdict in Carroll's favor totaling $83 million (€71 million), which pertains to defamation. Trump's lawyers argue that he is immune from lawsuits over comments he made about Carroll in 2019 while he was president. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on that appeal.
The Supreme Court did not provide a reason for its decision to reject the president's appeal, and Trump continues to deny any wrongdoing.
