Supreme Court Declines Trump Appeal of $5 Million Carroll Verdict
The denial exhausts Trump's federal appellate options on the 2023 jury finding, leaving the $5 million judgment intact unless pursued through other legal avenues.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear President Donald Trump's appeal of a $5 million civil jury verdict in the defamation and sexual abuse liability case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, according to reports from ABC News, Axios, and The Guardian dated June 29, 2026. The Court's denial was issued without a written opinion, which is standard procedure when justices decline to take up a case, and it leaves the lower court ruling in place.
A federal jury in May 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her through public statements he made denying her account. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages, a figure reported by ABC News and Axios. Trump has consistently denied the allegations and characterized Carroll's accusations as politically motivated, a position his legal team reiterated in the appeal before the Court.
Trump's legal team had argued, according to The Guardian, that the trial was conducted unfairly because the presiding judge permitted jurors to hear evidence of alleged past sexual misconduct by Trump beyond the specific Carroll incident. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit previously rejected that argument and upheld the jury verdict before Trump's team escalated the case to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court's order list reflecting the denial is a public document available on the Court's official docket. The specific vote count among justices is not disclosed in a standard cert denial order; no dissents from the denial have been reported as of this publication.
What remains unknown is whether Trump's legal team intends to pursue any further legal avenues, such as a petition for rehearing, though such petitions are rarely granted. The full accounting of any interest accrued on the $5 million judgment since its entry in 2023 would be determinable through the Southern District of New York court docket, case number 22-cv-10016. The status of any separate Carroll cases against Trump, including a second defamation verdict of approximately $83.3 million issued in January 2024 which is under its own appellate review, is not addressed by Monday's Supreme Court order.