Supreme Court Closes the Door — Again — on Trump's Challenge to the E. Jean Carroll Verdict
The US Supreme Court has rejected, for a second time, Donald Trump's effort to overturn the 2023 jury verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her. The Court issued the decision on August 17, 2026, in an unsigned order with no explanation, listing Trump's request under "rehearings denied" (The Guardian; Supreme Court order).
The August 17 order list includes a "REHEARINGS DENIED" section that names Trump. This is the second time the justices have declined to disturb the Carroll verdict. In June 2026, the Court refused to hear Trump's appeal on the merits — meaning it would not review the substance of the lower court's decision. That earlier denial closed the door on the initial petition Trump filed in 2025 asking the Court to take up the case (The Guardian).
The case traces back to a two-week civil trial in 2023. A federal jury in Manhattan found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, ordering him to pay $5 million. In 2024, a three-judge panel of the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals — the intermediate appellate court that reviews federal trial decisions in New York and several neighboring states — upheld that verdict. The Supreme Court's docket for case 25-573 records that a petition for rehearing was denied on June 13, 2025, and that on July 6, 2026, Trump's petition for rehearing was not accepted for filing (Supreme Court docket).
On July 28, 2026, Trump filed a new petition for a writ of certiorari — a formal request asking the Supreme Court to review a lower court's ruling — under a separate docket, 26-141, captioned Donald J. Trump, Petitioner v. E. Jean Carroll. In that filing, Trump's counsel wrote that the courts had voted to deny en banc rehearing (a rehearing before the full appellate court rather than a three-judge panel) of rulings in the case 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 litigation 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 civil judgment has been satisfied. Trump deposited the jury award plus interest into a court-held account several weeks after the 2023 verdict. In July 2026, a Manhattan federal judge ordered the funds released, and Carroll's legal team said approximately $5.6 million had been disbursed to her (The Guardian).
A separate, larger defamation action remains live. In 2024, a federal jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages after concluding he defamed her in 2019. In September 2025, a federal appeals court upheld that $83.3 million award. Trump's lawyers are appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, which was not set 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 intervene in the $5 million liability verdict — first by denying certiorari on the merits in June 2026, then by denying rehearing on August 17, 2026. Both orders were unsigned and issued without explanation, consistent with the Court's standard practice for such denials. The sequential refusals, combined with the Second Circuit's affirmance and repeated en banc rejections at the appellate level, leave Trump with no further avenue for Supreme Court review of the 2023 jury's liability finding.
The unresolved $83.3 million defamation judgment, by contrast, remains a live proceeding before the Court. Trump's certiorari petition in that case was pending and not set to be acted upon until later in 2026. That petition raises a separate set of legal questions, though both cases arise from the same underlying 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 stands or undergoes further judicial scrutiny. For now, the $5 million verdict is final, the funds have been disbursed, and the legal question of Trump's liability for sexual abuse and defamation in this case has been conclusively settled.
