President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice on Tuesday separately asked the Supreme Court to overturn a civil court verdict that ordered him to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her after she publicly claimed he had sexually assaulted her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. The fight now sits where elite power likes it best: inside a court system built to decide which rulers get consequences and which ones get immunity.
Carroll’s side has already won twice in Manhattan federal court. Trump’s lawyers want the high court to erase that result by treating his 2019 statements as protected presidential conduct, even though a jury found those statements defamatory and the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the award. The money at stake is enormous. So is the principle. If a president can turn a press release and reporters’ questions into a shield against civil liability, the public gets told that office itself is a kind of legal armor.
Who Gets Protected
Trump’s attorneys told the court, “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.” They argue that because he made the comments about Carroll in 2019, while he was president, he has immunity from the defamation claim. In their filing, they said, “Here, the President of the United States has been ordered to pay nearly $100 million in damages — including post-judgment interest — for issuing a press release and answering reporters’ questions, from the White House, defending against attacks on his fitness for office.”
That’s the language of hierarchy talking to itself. The White House becomes the place where power claims special status, and the courts become the referee deciding how much of that status survives public scrutiny. Trump’s lawyers also argue that a 2024 Supreme Court ruling in his favor required the verdict to be overturned because it found presidents have immunity for official acts and that “most of a President’s public communications” are official acts.
The Justice Department joined the push. Its petition echoes Trump’s argument and says the department should have been allowed to substitute the U.S. government for Trump as the defendant because he was president when he made the statements about Carroll. The department said that if that switch had been allowed, the case would have been dismissed because under the Westfall Act, federal employees are shielded from certain civil claims for conduct performed in the course of their duties, including defamation.
Who Pays the Price
Carroll’s case has already run through two civil trials and two federal appeals court rulings. In January 2024, another Manhattan federal court jury found Trump civilly liable for defaming Carroll in 2019 when she went public with her claim that Trump had raped her in the dressing room. That verdict, with its $83.3 million award, was upheld by the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
The appeals court panel said the damages award was “reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts” and rejected several of Trump’s legal challenges. One judge, US Circuit Judge Denny Chin, wrote that “Presidential immunity was not raised for the first three years of this case.” Chin also rejected Trump’s effort to have the United States substituted as a defendant, writing that “no other defendant would be permitted to move to substitute the United States in his place, fifteen months after trial and the entry of judgment against him.”
That’s the hierarchy in plain view. A man with the presidency tried to move the state itself into his place. The court said no, at least for now.
What the Courts Already Found
The legal battle between Trump and Carroll dates back to 2019. Carroll said Trump defamed her when he denied the assault, said she wasn’t his type, and claimed she made it up to boost sales of a book. Trump denied wrongdoing in both cases. In the earlier case, a Manhattan federal court jury in May 2023 found that Trump was liable for having sexually abused Carroll in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s and for defaming her in late 2022 when he made statements denying her allegations.
The 2nd Circuit later said the $83.3 million judgment was reasonable “in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case.” It also said the record supported the district court’s finding that the “degree of reprehensibility” of Trump’s conduct was “remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented.” The court said Trump’s repeated comments about Carroll resulted in “a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury,” and that the jury was allowed to find Trump would not stop defaming Carroll unless he was hit with a substantial financial penalty.
Trump’s latest filing leans hard on the Supreme Court’s 2024 immunity ruling. CNN reported that the appeal has not yet been docketed at the high court and relies heavily on that decision. Trump told the justices that an appeals court decision in Carroll’s favor would “cause significant damage, not only to this president and future presidents” but also the nation. The filing also asks the court to review whether the United States government should be the defendant rather than the president.
CNN also reported that attorneys for Carroll declined to comment. It said the latest appeal comes weeks after the Supreme Court declined to take up a separate case from Trump in which he is seeking to unwind a $5 million civil verdict that found he sexually abused and defamed Carroll at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s. Trump has also launched a longshot effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear that appeal.
The court is out for the summer, so it won’t consider the president’s appeal until the fall. If it agrees to hear the case, a decision likely wouldn’t come until next June. The machinery moves slowly. The people at the center of it don’t.
Trump’s lawyers argued he should have immunity for his 2019 comments because he made them while serving as president. They told the justices, “That use of official Presidential statements matters, because this Court has made clear that official Presidential acts may not be used as evidence to impose liability for other conduct,” referring to the court’s 2024 ruling that presidents can’t be criminally prosecuted for “official” acts taken by a president. The whole dispute turns on who gets to define official power, and how far that power can reach before accountability is treated as an inconvenience.