President Trump's legal team has asked the Supreme Court to overturn an $83.3 million defamation judgment awarded to advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, arguing no court in American history has ever imposed damages on a president for conduct in office.
Trump's attorneys filed the petition on Tuesday, escalating a years-long legal fight to the nation's highest court after the full Second Circuit Court of Appeals refused in April to reconsider a three-judge panel's decision upholding the verdict. The filing rests on the Supreme Court's own 2024 ruling granting broad presidential immunity for official acts, a landmark decision Trump's lawyers say the lower courts ignored when they let the massive judgment stand.
The move comes alongside a separate petition from the U.S. Department of Justice, which is asking the justices to let the federal government step in as the defendant under a 1988 law known as the Westfall Act. If the court agrees, the United States would replace Trump as the named defendant, and because federal law generally bars defamation claims against the government, Carroll's entire judgment could collapse. The National Desk reported that the DOJ argues Trump's public statements about Carroll were made within the scope of his official duties as president.
The petition's central argument is blunt: no sitting president has ever been held financially liable for statements made while serving in office. Trump's attorneys framed the case as a direct threat not just to this president but to the institution of the presidency itself.
Fox News reported on the filing, which stated:
"This is the first case in our Nation's history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a President for his conduct in office."
The petition went further, warning that the lower court ruling would cause lasting institutional harm. Trump's lawyers wrote that "if left standing, the decision below will cause significant damage, not only to this President and future Presidents, but also to the Nation that the Presidency was designed to serve."
That argument leans heavily on the Supreme Court's 2024 presidential immunity decision, which established broad protections for presidents acting in their official capacity. Trump's legal team contends that his 2019 public statements denying Carroll's allegations, made from the White House, on social media, at news conferences, and during trial, fall squarely within the scope of official presidential communications.
The Second Circuit rejected that immunity argument in September and upheld the award. The full appeals court then declined to reconsider the case in April, leaving the Supreme Court as Trump's final avenue.
The DOJ's parallel petition adds a second legal path to the same destination. The Westfall Act, passed by Congress in 1988, allows the federal government to substitute itself as the defendant when a federal employee is sued for actions taken within the scope of employment. If the justices agree that Trump's statements about Carroll qualified as official conduct, the swap would effectively end the case.
That outcome would matter because defamation claims against the United States are barred under federal law. Carroll could not simply re-file against the government. The judgment, $65 million in punitive damages and $18.3 million in compensatory damages, would be gone.
The administration has not been shy about bringing consequential questions to the Supreme Court. Earlier this year, the Trump administration asked the justices to reinstate mail-in ballot restrictions ahead of the midterms, and the court has been a frequent venue for disputes over executive authority during Trump's tenure.
The underlying dispute began with Carroll's public accusation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, the upscale Manhattan department store, sometime in the mid-1990s. Trump denied the allegation and accused Carroll of fabricating the story to promote a book.
Carroll sued for defamation, arguing that Trump's repeated public denials and personal attacks on her credibility damaged her reputation. A federal jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her in a separate case, awarding $5 million in damages. The Supreme Court declined to hear Trump's appeal in that case earlier this year, leaving the $5 million judgment in place.
The $83.3 million verdict followed in January 2024, after a second federal jury found Trump defamed Carroll through statements he made while denying the allegations. The jury broke the award into $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages, a figure Trump's attorneys have argued is excessive on its face.
The sheer scale of the punitive damages component, more than three times the compensatory award, is itself a point of contention. Just The News noted that the defamatory statements at issue were made on social media, at news conferences, and during trial proceedings, raising the question of how far official-act immunity extends into a president's public communications.
The justices are in summer recess and are not expected to decide whether to take up the case until late September at the earliest. That timeline means the $83.3 million judgment remains in place for now, though collection has been on hold through the appeals process.
The court's decision on whether to grant review will carry weight beyond this case. If the justices agree to hear it, they would be setting the terms for how the 2024 presidential immunity ruling applies to civil defamation claims, a question no court has fully resolved. If they decline, the Second Circuit's ruling stands, and the precedent that a president can be held liable for public statements made in office becomes settled law in that circuit.
The broader pattern of Trump-era cases reaching the Supreme Court shows no sign of slowing. The justices have already weighed in on questions ranging from presidential firing power to state-level bans on biological males in women's sports, and the Carroll petition adds another high-stakes test of executive authority to the docket.
Several open questions remain unanswered. The specific docket numbers for both the Trump petition and the DOJ's Westfall Act petition have not been publicly detailed. Whether the DOJ's petition covers only the $83 million case or also reaches the separate $5 million judgment is unclear from the filings described so far. And the Supreme Court has set no response deadline or conference date.
The DOJ's involvement is worth watching closely. The department's position, that a president's public denials of personal misconduct allegations count as official acts, would, if accepted, create a broad shield for any future president facing civil liability for statements made from the White House. That is a significant expansion of the immunity framework, and one that critics of the administration will almost certainly challenge.
But the legal logic is straightforward. If the Supreme Court's 2024 immunity decision means what Trump's lawyers say it means, then a president responding publicly to allegations, even personal ones, while serving in office is acting within the scope of the job. The Westfall Act was designed for exactly that situation: shielding federal employees from personal liability for on-the-job conduct by letting the government absorb the claim.
The question is whether the justices see Carroll's case as the right vehicle to draw that line. The court has already shown a willingness to engage with difficult questions about presidential power. Trump himself has floated potential Supreme Court nominees who share his view of robust executive authority, and the composition of the bench may matter as much as the merits when the petition lands on the conference list this fall.
For now, the $83.3 million judgment hangs in legal limbo, upheld by two levels of federal courts, challenged by both the president and his own Justice Department, and awaiting a decision from nine justices who have already redefined the boundaries of presidential power once in the last two years.
If the court built the immunity framework, it ought to be willing to say what it covers. The answer will shape the presidency long after this case is closed.
