President Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the $83 million civil judgment awarded to E. Jean Carroll, a move that escalates a years-long legal fight after lower courts refused to grant him relief.
The filing, first reported by Axios, marks the latest round in Trump's effort to challenge the massive award that grew out of a defamation case tied to Carroll's sexual-assault allegations. Trump has denied the allegations throughout.
No details about the specific legal arguments in the filing or the type of petition Trump submitted have been made public so far. What is clear is that the president's legal team has now elevated the dispute to the highest court in the country after exhausting options at the appellate level.
The Supreme Court filing follows a string of losses for Trump in the Carroll litigation. The Second Circuit refused to rehear his challenge to the $83 million defamation verdict, closing the door at the federal appeals level.
Before that, the justices themselves declined to take up Trump's appeal of a separate, earlier $5 million verdict in the same Carroll saga, a case rooted in the underlying sexual-abuse claim rather than the defamation damages.
That earlier refusal makes the current petition a steeper climb. The Court already passed on one chance to weigh in. Trump's attorneys will need to show the justices something they did not see the first time around, or frame the $83 million judgment as raising a distinct legal question worth their attention.
Carroll, represented by attorney Roberta Kaplan, secured the $83 million award after a trial in Manhattan. A photo caption in the Axios report shows Carroll and Kaplan outside a Manhattan courthouse in 2024, during the period the litigation was moving through the trial court.
The size of the judgment drew national attention when it was handed down. Eighty-three million dollars is an extraordinary figure in a civil defamation case, and Trump's team has signaled from the start that it intended to fight the number at every level.
Neither Trump's attorneys nor Carroll's legal team have issued public statements in connection with the new Supreme Court filing, based on available reporting.
Trump's petition lands on a docket already crowded with politically charged disputes. The Court recently upheld state bans on biological males in women's sports in a landmark 6, 3 ruling, and it backed the administration's authority to terminate Temporary Protected Status for certain immigrant groups in a decision that drew sharp criticism from progressives.
The justices have also agreed to hear a challenge to AR-15 bans that they had previously sidestepped, a sign that the current Court is willing to take on cases it once avoided.
Whether the justices apply that same willingness to the Carroll judgment remains an open question. The case sits at the intersection of defamation law, civil procedure, and the unique legal posture of a sitting president challenging a verdict entered before he returned to office.
Several critical details remain unknown. The specific grounds Trump is citing, whether constitutional, procedural, or related to the size of the damages, have not been disclosed in public reporting. The case name and docket number tied to the new filing have not been published. And the procedural posture, whether the Second Circuit's mandate has already taken effect, or whether Trump secured a stay, is unclear.
The $83 million figure itself raises questions. Whether that amount represents the full judgment including punitive damages, or a specific component of a larger award, has not been broken out in the reporting so far.
Those gaps matter. The Court's decision on whether to hear the case will turn on technical legal questions that the public has not yet been able to evaluate.
For now, Trump has done the one thing his critics said he would never stop doing: he kept fighting. Whether the Supreme Court gives him the hearing he wants, or turns him away a second time, will say as much about the Court's appetite for politically fraught civil disputes as it does about the merits of the case itself.
An $83 million judgment built on a civil defamation claim deserves the most rigorous appellate scrutiny the system can provide. If the courts are confident the verdict was sound, a full hearing should only confirm it.
