The Supreme Court has rescheduled consideration of President Donald Trump’s appeal of the $5 million E. Jean Carroll verdict 15 times since February, stretching out the delay on a jury award for more than three years and leaving the case undecided as of June 22, 2026. The court’s silence has handed Trump time while Carroll waits for a ruling on a verdict tied to her claim that he sexually abused and defamed her.
Who Gets the Delay
The people with the least power in this fight are the ones waiting. Carroll’s attorneys have been left with a verdict that has sat in legal limbo while the nation’s highest court keeps pushing the matter back without explanation. The court almost never explains how it handles pending appeals, and it has not done so here. A day before the justices were set to meet behind closed doors on February 27, the Trump case was yanked without explanation. Since then, it has been set on the court’s agenda and rescheduled 15 times.
Steve Vladeck of the Georgetown School of Law and a CNN Supreme Court analyst said, “The oddity here isn’t just that the court has rescheduled one of the Carroll cases 15 times, it’s the absence of a persuasive justification for it having done so.” He said the most logical explanation is that the court is waiting for other expected appeals, even though the cases deal with different legal issues. He added, “The only other explanation is some kind of special solicitude for President Trump — which runs into the problem that this case, at least, is about conduct he engaged in when he was not in office.”
What the Court Is Protecting
Trump initially filed his appeal in November, and the delay has benefited him in part because it has deferred a $5 million verdict a jury in New York awarded to Carroll more than three years ago. Since Trump filed that appeal seven months ago, he also lost a separate $83 million case involving Carroll, and the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into the magazine columnist. The court’s refusal to explain itself leaves the machinery of power looking less like neutral procedure and more like a private club deciding when, or whether, ordinary people get closure.
Carroll sued Trump in 2019 for defamation and then sued him again in 2022 for defamation and battery after the state enacted a law allowing victims of sexual abuse to file civil claims for past incidents. In an unusual quirk, the second case, filed in 2022, went to trial first and the jury awarded Carroll $5 million. That is the case already pending at the Supreme Court. The 2019 case went to trial second and resulted in an $83 million judgment against Trump. The first case, filed in 2019, is expected to land at the Supreme Court in the coming days. Including interest, Trump owes Carroll over $100 million.
How the Legal Machine Works
Carroll’s 2022 suit alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s and defamed her by claiming she made up the story to boost sales of a book. Trump, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, has claimed U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan made numerous errors by allowing the jury to hear testimony from two women who alleged Trump sexually assaulted them years ago. Trump also argued that the judge should not have let jurors see the “Access Hollywood tape,” which captured Trump in 2005 on a hot mic saying he gropes and kisses women.
Trump was heard saying on the recording, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything, … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” Kaplan concluded the recording was relevant for the jury to hear because it added to the probability that Trump “in fact has had contact with women’s genitalia in the past without their consent, or that he has attempted to do so.”
Last year, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury’s $5 million verdict against Trump, ruling the trial judge did not make errors that would warrant a new trial. In June 2025, Trump lost an effort to have the appeal reviewed by the full bench of judges and, months later, he appealed to the Supreme Court. Trump’s attorneys told the Supreme Court in a January filing, “It is deeply damaging to the fabric of our republic for President Trump, in the midst of a historic presidency, to have to take his focus away from his singular and unique duties as chief executive to continue fighting against decades-old, false allegations and the myriad wrongs throughout this baseless case.” They added, “This mistreatment of a President cannot be allowed to stand.”
Carroll’s attorneys urged the high court to deny the case, arguing that the district court acted within its jurisdiction in how it handled the evidence. In a highly technical brief dealing with rules of evidence, they focused largely on the 2nd Circuit decision upholding the verdict. The court’s duty, they said, was simply to decide whether a jury could reasonably find by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Trump committed an act of sexual assault. A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit, all three appointed by Democratic presidents, ruled unanimously that if it could so find, the court had the discretion to admit the evidence.
Those written arguments were all submitted to the Supreme Court by the end of January. And that is when the delays began. During its October-to-June term, the Supreme Court justices meet privately in conferences once a week to discuss whether to grant or deny pending appeals. It takes four justices to grant a case. Appeals are often held for multiple conferences for many reasons. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the court almost always holds an appeal for at least a second meeting before granting the appeal and scheduling oral arguments. Sometimes cases are repeatedly relisted and denied without explanation. Sometimes cases are held to give a justice an opportunity to dissent from a decision to deny it. Sometimes the justices seem likely to be waiting for a similar case to make its way up through the lower courts. Often, the reason is opaque.
Usually, when a case is held, it is “relisted” for future conferences. The Supreme Court has been relisting multiple appeals involving local bans on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines since December, for instance. But what is different about the case involving Carroll is that the president’s appeal is being “rescheduled.” That suggests it is not being discussed at all, at least not formally. Last year, the court rescheduled a case dealing with the federal government’s sweeping power to prosecute crimes on Native American lands 17 times, holding it over its summer recess. In the end, the petition was denied. Only one other case has been rescheduled as many times as the Carroll appeal: a case involving a housing police officer in Ohio who shot and killed a suspect who was fleeing with a gun in his hand.
A spokesperson for the Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment. Carroll’s attorneys declined to comment. Trump’s legal team referred to a prior comment on the case in which he described Carroll’s claims as “false” and “Liberal Lawfare.”
Much has changed in the legal brawl between Trump and Carroll since the case made its way to the Supreme Court’s docket. The Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into Carroll last month that is focused on whether she committed perjury in testimony tied to the pending appeal. Meanwhile, a second case involving Trump and Carroll appears to be on the way. Carroll sued Trump again over statements he made about her in 2019. A jury in New York found those statements were defamatory and ordered Trump to pay $83 million in damages. A federal appeals court panel affirmed the damages award, finding it “reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts” and rejecting several of Trump’s legal challenges. Among them, the appeals court found that Trump had previously waived any claim of presidential immunity and said the Supreme Court’s decision in 2024 involving presidential immunity did not alter its view. The full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to revisit that decision in late April.
In an unusual letter in the Carroll case already pending at the Supreme Court, Trump’s attorneys wrote on June 2 that they intend to appeal the second case to the Supreme Court “within the next month.” They added, “The court may wish to consider the petitions together.” Given the way scheduling works at the Supreme Court, that round would almost certainly push a decision on whether to hear or deny the Carroll matter into the fall. On Monday, the court once again added the case to its agenda for Thursday.
Separately, the Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz. The justices, by a 6-3 vote, granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who had urged them to undo a federal appeals court decision that overturned the verdict. The three liberal justices dissented. Prosecutors had been preparing to try Pedro Hernandez for a third time. His first trial ended in a mistrial. The unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed Hernandez’ murder and kidnapping conviction in the second trial because of how the judge had answered a question from jurors. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had called the basis for overturning the conviction “a slender reed” that essentially ignored a five-month-long trial with 66 witnesses.
The justices agreed, in an unsigned opinion, that federal courts should not second-guess state courts under a 1996 federal law intended to reduce federal court oversight of state criminal trials. “The Second Circuit exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief,” the justices wrote. Hernandez, 64, has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Bragg said, “It’s impossible to imagine the pain of losing a child, waiting so long for justice and having to brace for more proceedings,” and said he hoped the Patz family gained some peace of mind from the ruling. Hernandez’ lawyers said they were “terribly disappointed” and said, “We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit.”