The Supreme Court on Monday denied President Donald Trump’s request for a rehearing in relation to a 2023 civil case that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, court documents show.
The President’s legal battle with Carroll began in 2019, after the writer alleged she was raped by Trump in a changing room at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City in the 1990s. It resulted in two separate trials.
In one lawsuit, filed under the New York Adult Survivors Act in 2022, a jury awarded Carroll some $5 million in damages for the sexual abuse and defamation. Trump asked the Supreme Court to review the decision, but it denied the petition in June. He requested a rehearing by the highest court, but that request was denied Monday without comment.
Rehearings in the Supreme Court are rarely granted. Per court regulations, such petitions are only permitted under “intervening circumstances of a substantial or controlling effect.”
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The President maintains that he did not know Carroll prior to her accusations against him.
“I have absolutely no idea who this woman is,” he wrote on social media after the first verdict was handed down—which he called a “disgrace.”
“No one is above the law, not even a former President of the United States,” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said at the time. She added that she hoped the verdict would help tear down “a wall of doubt and intimidation” faced by survivors of sexual assault.
A spokesperson for the President’s legal team says in a statement to TIME: “The American people stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll hoaxes.”
Trump argues that presidential immunity applies
CCarroll’s team had previously brought a defamation suit against Trump in 2019, pertaining to disparaging remarks he’d made about her while in office. A federal jury ruled in her favor in 2024, ordering Trump to pay $83.3 million. His team is currently asking the Supreme Court to review that decision.
Trump’s legal team believes that the defamation case relating to remarks made while in office should be covered by presidential immunity.
Martinich-Sauter separately submitted a petition for rehearing the sexual abuse and defamation case in July. He argued that presidential-immunity questions relevant to the pending case could also affect the $5 million judgment, since that trial featured the same remarks as evidence.
“That is a paradigmatic reason to at least hold a petition,” read the request from Martinich-Sauter.
He cited Supreme Court precedent from another one of the President’s personal legal battles, involving claims of interference with the 2020 election. The Supreme Court vacated the lower court’s decision in 2024 and ruled that former Presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for certain official acts, but not for unofficial acts.
However, with Monday’s denial, Trump has exhausted his avenues for Supreme Court review of the $5 million judgment.
“We are pleased that the United States Supreme Court has declined again to hear this case,” Kaplan tells TIME. “As a result, the jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court.”
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