Supreme Court Says No — Again — to Trump in the E. Jean Carroll Case
The US Supreme Court has rejected, for a second time, Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the verdict that found him responsible for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and then damaging her reputation by making false statements about her. The Court issued the decision on August 17, 2026, with no explanation, listing Trump's request under "rehearings denied" (The Guardian; Supreme Court order).
This is the second time the justices have declined to overturn the Carroll verdict. In June 2026, the Court refused to hear Trump's appeal on the merits — meaning it would not review whether the lower court's decision was correct. That earlier refusal closed the door on the first request Trump filed in 2025 asking the Court to take up the case (The Guardian).
The case goes back to a two-week trial in 2023. A jury in Manhattan found Trump legally responsible for sexual abuse and defamation — which means harming someone's reputation through false public statements. The jury ordered him to pay $5 million. In 2024, a higher court called the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with that verdict. Court records show that a request for rehearing was denied on June 13, 2025, and that on July 6, 2026, Trump's latest request for rehearing was not accepted for filing (Supreme Court docket).
On July 28, 2026, Trump filed a new request asking the Supreme Court to review the case under a separate case number, 26-141. In that filing, Trump's lawyers wrote that the lower courts had voted to deny a full-court rehearing for the third and fourth times, and that the case concerns defamation (Supreme Court docket; petition). The August 17 order denying rehearing effectively closes the door on this phase of the case at the Supreme Court level.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll's attorney, said the jury's unanimous verdict that Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court (The Guardian).
The $5 million judgment has been paid. Trump deposited the jury award plus interest into a court-held account several weeks after the 2023 verdict. In July 2026, a judge ordered the funds released, and Carroll's legal team said approximately $5.6 million had been sent to her (The Guardian).
A separate, larger defamation case is still ongoing. In 2024, a jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages after finding he defamed her in 2019. In September 2025, an appeals court upheld that $83.3 million award. Trump's lawyers are appealing to the Supreme Court, which was not expected to act on that appeal until later in 2026 (The Guardian).
The broader context here is that the Supreme Court has now twice declined to step into the $5 million case. Both times, the justices issued their decision without explanation and without signing their names, which is normal practice for the Court when it turns down requests like these. The repeated refusals, along with the appeals court's agreement and the lower courts' repeated rejections of full-court rehearings, leave Trump with no remaining path for Supreme Court review of the 2023 jury's finding.
The $83.3 million defamation judgment, on the other hand, is still before the Court. Trump's appeal in that case was pending and not expected to be addressed until later in 2026. That appeal involves different legal questions, though both cases come from the same dispute between Trump and Carroll. How the Court handles the $83.3 million appeal will determine whether the larger of the two judgments against Trump stays in place or gets further review. For now, the $5 million verdict is final, the money has been paid, and the question of Trump's responsibility for sexual abuse and defamation in this case is settled.
