The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to revisit a $5.6 million judgment stemming from writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit.
The high court declined Trump’s petition for rehearing, marking the second time the justices have refused to review his challenge to the judgment.
The rejection appeared on an orders list released Monday. The court did not provide an explanation for its decision or disclose how individual justices voted.
Trump had asked the justices to reconsider their June decision declining to hear his appeal of the lower court ruling.
The rehearing request represented an unusual effort to revive the case after the Supreme Court had already declined to take it up.
The court subsequently distributed Trump’s rehearing petition to all nine justices for consideration, leaving open the possibility that the case could be revived. At least four justices would have needed to agree to hear it.
Monday’s decision closed that avenue.
Trump has already turned over $5 million in damages plus interest in connection with the case.
The legal battle stems from a lawsuit Carroll filed against Trump in 2022, accusing him of sexually assaulting her inside a New York City department store in the mid-1990s and later defaming her after she publicly made the allegation.
A federal jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million. Trump has denied Carroll’s allegations.
Carroll’s attorneys have argued that Trump has repeatedly attempted to challenge the judgment in different courts without success.
Trump’s lawyers, however, sought to raise questions about whether presidential immunity should protect statements he made in 2019 while serving his first term in the White House.
They said their rehearing petition would “present important questions concerning Presidential immunity for statements President Trump made in 2019, while serving as President.”
The argument sought to draw on the Supreme Court’s landmark 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States.
In that case, the justices held that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions involving their core constitutional powers and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts.
Although that decision dealt with criminal prosecution, Trump’s attorneys have argued that aspects of its reasoning should extend to civil litigation.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to reconsider the Carroll case means Trump’s effort to overturn the $5.6 million judgment has again fallen short.
However, the president’s legal fight with Carroll is not finished.
Trump is separately challenging an approximately $83 million defamation judgment awarded to Carroll in another case.
That judgment arose from statements Trump made about Carroll after she accused him of assaulting her.
According to the Daily Mail, the Supreme Court is expected to consider Trump’s appeal involving that separate judgment later this year.
