President Donald Trump suffered a decisive legal defeat on August 17, 2026, when the Supreme Court rejected his plea to revisit its earlier refusal to hear his challenge to a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation judgment favoring advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
The justices issued a terse, unexplained order denying the petition for rehearing, with no dissenting opinions recorded. It marked the second time in under two months that the court turned away Trump’s bid to escape that verdict.
Carroll had sued Trump for defamation after he publicly dismissed her rape allegations, which she first revealed in her 2019 memoir “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.” She said Trump attacked her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a Manhattan luxury retailer, in the mid-1990s, pushing her against a wall and raping her. She testified that she could not recall the precise date, or even the year.
Trump denied everything, telling an interviewer Carroll was “not my type” and insisting the two had never met — despite a photograph of the two that he mistook for a picture of his ex-wife Marla Maples when his lawyers showed it to him at a deposition.
Separate Lawsuits Produced Two Verdicts
Carroll pursued two distinct legal claims against Trump. Her first defamation lawsuit came in 2019. Then in 2022, she filed a second action alleging battery and defamation, taking advantage of New York’s Adult Survivors Act. That statute opened a temporary one-year period for victims to pursue sexual abuse claims that had otherwise aged out under the usual statute of limitations.
A jury in the battery and defamation case found Trump liable for sexual abuse on May 9, 2023, and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million. The panel did not find that he raped her. A separate jury in January 2024 awarded her $83.3 million over statements Trump made in June 2019, while he was president.
Long-Shot Request Goes Nowhere
After the Supreme Court declined to hear Trump’s appeal on June 29, his attorneys filed a rehearing petition — a rarely successful gambit that asks the justices to reconsider their own decision.
Such requests succeed only in exceptional circumstances, and legal experts viewed Trump’s chances as slim from the outset. The August 17 denial confirmed those expectations, arriving in a single-sentence ruling with no elaboration.
The brevity of the order, and the absence of any noted dissent, suggested the justices saw no reason to revisit their earlier stance.
That denial cemented the $5 million judgment for sexual abuse and defamation. Trump had exhausted his options on that front — and by then he had already paid. After the June denial, the money was released from the escrow account where it had been held since the verdict, and Carroll received $5.62 million in mid-July, a figure that included years of accrued interest. His lawyers had tried to block that payment and have since gone to court to get the money back.
Another Appeal Still Pending
The larger $83.3 million defamation award remains in play. On July 28, Trump and the Justice Department filed separate petitions asking the court to throw out that verdict, contending that presidential immunity protects remarks he made while holding office. The justices have not acted on either. On August 20 the court extended Carroll’s deadline to respond, from August 31 to October 30, which pushes any decision past the justices’ late-September conference; SCOTUSblog has said the court is likely to take it up in the fall.
Carroll’s public accusations in 2019 ignited widespread attention and reshaped national conversations about sexual misconduct. Her decision to litigate carried her story from the pages of a book into federal court and ultimately to the nation’s highest tribunal.
For Trump, the August order represented a legal dead end. After months of appeals and procedural maneuvers, the court’s refusal to entertain a rehearing left the sexual abuse finding undisturbed and the money already handed over. What remains open is the larger award, and the immunity question underneath it.
