Writer E. Jean Carroll secured a major legal win over President Trump on Monday after the Supreme Court declined to take up his bid to undo a jury verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.
Carroll marked the decision with a short post on her Substack blog, declaring in all caps: “WE WON!”
“THIS WIN IS FOR EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD!” Carroll added.
A unanimous federal jury previously concluded that Carroll had shown, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Mr. Trump sexually abused her during an encounter at a New York City department store in the mid-1990s. Mr. Trump did not appear at the 2023 civil trial, and his legal team presented no witnesses before jurors awarded Carroll $5 million.
The panel, made up of six men and three women, deliberated for less than three hours.
Mr. Trump has rejected Carroll’s allegations since they became public in 2019, when she detailed them in a book excerpt published by New York Magazine.
He is also challenging a separate January 2024 federal jury verdict that found him liable for additional defamatory remarks about Carroll. In that case, jurors awarded her another $83 million. Court filings showed Mr. Trump sought Supreme Court review in both matters.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said the Supreme Court’s action “affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J. Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll. His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team called the case a “Democrat-funded” hoax. “President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again,” the spokesman said, in reply to a comment on the president’s legal defeat in the Carroll case.
Mr. Trump claimed in his appeal of the sexual abuse case that Carroll’s claims were “implausible.” He argued testimony in the case stretched “credulity past the breaking point,” and railed against the trial judge’s decision to allow testimony from other women who alleged inappropriate sexual conduct at his hands.
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Carroll urged the Supreme Court to decline to hear the appeal. She argued that Mr. Trump failed to raise any argument that would be grounds for the Court to overturn the jury’s verdict. She said the Second Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that evidence from the other women was properly admitted at trial, and the outcome of the case would have been the same even without it.
Attorneys for Carroll said during the eight-day trial that her allegations fit a pattern, or “modus operandi,” for Mr. Trump. In addition to two other women who described Mr. Trump suddenly turning casual confrontations into alleged sexual misconduct, the jury heard from witnesses who said Carroll confided in them after the incident. The jurors were also shown an “Access Hollywood” video clip in which Trump could be heard describing with vulgar language grabbing women’s genitals.
The Second Circuit denied Mr. Trump’s appeal in December 2024, and in June 2025 rejected a request for an en banc review, in which all the judges on the court would have considered the case.
The Supreme Court was Mr. Trump’s last hope of overturning the case.
The jury rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped, though the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, later wrote that the conclusion that Mr. Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll by forcefully inserting his fingers was an “implicit determination that Mr. Trump digitally raped her.”
