Trump asks Supreme Court to hear appeal of $83.3 million defamation verdict against him

Lawyers for President Donald Trump and the federal government on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to take up his appeal of the defamation case brought against him by journalist E. Jean Carroll. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in the case, and a federal appeals court in New York upheld that verdict. Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court that the lower court’s ruling “wrongly eviscerates Presidential immunity,” adding that 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.” Carroll, who wrote a popular advice column for Elle magazine for 27 years, filed her lawsuit against Trump in November 2019, during his first term as president. Carroll had alleged that Trump had sexually abused her in a dressing room at a New York department store in 1996; her lawsuit contended that in June 2019, Trump had defamed her by calling her a liar – saying, for example, that he had never met Carroll, that she “was trying to sell a new book” that “should be sold in the fiction section,” and that her accusations were “totally false.” In January 2024, a jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million. Trump appealed the $83.3 million award – which included both compensatory and punitive damages – to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which last year affirmed the award. It found “ample evidence that Trump was recklessly indifferent to Carroll’s health and safety” and that “Carroll was subjected to ongoing and prolific harassment as a result of these statements, including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury.” The full court of appeals in April declined to rehear the case. In his filing on Tuesday, Trump’s private lawyer, Robert Giuffra, contended that the 2nd Circuit never determined whether Trump’s statements were entitled to immunity (but avoided this through “procedural contortions”), “even after” the Supreme Court in 2024 indicated “that ‘most of a President’s public communications are likely to fall comfortably within’ that protection.” The $83.3 million award cannot be allowed to stand, Giuffra wrote, because “[t]he threat of even a single damages judgment based on official acts will render all Presidents ‘unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out [their] duties for fear that [they] may be next.’” Tuesday’s filing is the second one involving Carroll to come to the justices. On June 29, the Supreme Court turned down Trump’s appeal in a separate case in which a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and awarded her $5 million. He argued in that case that Carroll’s lawyers should not have been allowed to introduce testimony by other women who also alleged that Trump had assaulted them, as well as the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. On July 8, Trump filed a petition for rehearing, asking the justices to consider their denial of review. The court has not yet acted on that petition, although it could do so as soon as Aug. 17. However, Carroll has already received the $5 million award (plus interest), which had been set aside in an escrow account after the verdict. In a separate filing on Tuesday, the federal government also urged the Supreme Court to grant review to decide whether the court of appeals should have granted then-Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi’s request to recertify that Trump made his statements as part of his role as president and therefore the federal government, rather than Trump, should be the defendant in Carroll’s case. Then-Attorney General William Barr originally certified in 2020 that Trump was acting as president when he made the statements at the center of the case, but Merrick Garland, who served as attorney general to President Joe Biden, withdrew that certification in 2023. The 2nd Circuit turned down Bondi’s April 2025 request to recertify Trump. It reasoned (among other things) that the law governing the substitution of the federal government for federal employees, known as the Westfall Act, required the attorney general to make the certification before Trump’s 2024 trial. Acting Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan (who presumably is serving in that role because the current solicitor general, D. John Sauer, represented Trump in the lower courts while he was still in private practice) called the 2nd Circuit’s decision not to grant Bondi’s recertification request “illogical.” “Once this case was … removed to federal court,” Mooppan wrote, the “plain language” of the Westfall Act “did not impose any time limit at all, much less a pretrial restriction, on when any recertification must occur.” Carroll’s responses to the petitions from the government and Trump are due 30 days after the petitions are docketed, although she may seek an extension of time in which to file her briefs opposing review. Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Trump asks Supreme Court to hear appeal of $83.3 million defamation verdict against him, SCOTUSblog (Jul. 29, 2026, 11:53 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/07/trump-asks-supreme-court-to-hear-appeal-of-83-million-defamation-verdict-against-him/