Trump Carroll Supreme Court appeal targets $83.3m verdict
Trump and the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to undo E Jean Carroll’s $83.3m defamation award, citing immunity arguments.
By Daniel Okafor · Business Editor
3 min read
The Trump Carroll Supreme Court appeal asks the justices to throw out an $83.3m defamation judgment that writer E Jean Carroll won against President Donald Trump. The case matters because Trump’s lawyers and the Department of Justice are pressing the court to extend immunity arguments into a civil verdict tied to statements he made while in office.
Trump’s personal attorneys filed their petition at the Supreme Court, and Justice Department lawyers filed a similar request this week, according to Al Jazeera, Reuters and The Associated Press. Both filings seek to block the award Carroll received after a jury found Trump liable for defaming her.
What is Trump asking the Supreme Court to do?
Trump’s legal team wants the Supreme Court to reverse the $83.3m penalty from Carroll’s 2019 defamation case. His lawyers argue that his comments about Carroll were made during exchanges with the public and reporters while he was president, and therefore should be treated as an official act.
Federal lawyers made a related argument under the Westfall Act, a law that can protect federal employees from some civil claims when the alleged conduct occurred within the scope of their jobs. In their filing, they wrote that without Supreme Court action, “the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office.”
Trump’s personal attorneys also pointed to the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Trump v United States. That ruling broadened presidential immunity in criminal cases by recognizing presumptive immunity for official acts, though it did not define that term in detail and did not apply to civil lawsuits.
The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected Trump’s attempt to use that criminal-case precedent in Carroll’s civil case on September 8 last year. In their Supreme Court filing, Trump’s lawyers said the appeals court upheld the verdict without deciding whether presidential immunity covered the statements at issue.
“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,” Trump’s team wrote, according to the news agencies.
How did the E Jean Carroll cases reach this point?
Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, first publicly accused Trump in a 2019 book, saying he assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996. Trump has denied her allegations, including by saying, “This woman is not my type.”
Carroll filed two defamation suits against Trump. The first, filed in 2019, followed his statements that she had lied about the alleged assault for personal gain. The second came in 2022, after Trump again accused her of lying and called her case “phony,” a “complete con job” and a “complete scam” in a social media post.
The 2022 case finished first. In 2023, a jury awarded Carroll $5m after finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, though the jury did not find him liable for rape as Carroll had alleged.
The 2019 case went to verdict in January 2024. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3m, with much of the total in punitive damages, after finding Trump liable for damaging her reputation.
Trump has continued to challenge both verdicts. In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal of the $5m award, which had grown with interest to nearly $5.8m, and a federal judge later ordered that payment to be released this month. It is not yet clear whether the justices will agree to hear the new appeal over the $83.3m judgment.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.