A divided federal appeals court in New York refused Wednesday to let President Trump relitigate the $83 million defamation verdict won by writer E. Jean Carroll, ruling that the president raised his arguments too late and that no special treatment was warranted. The decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals leaves the Supreme Court as Trump's last avenue of appeal in a case that has dragged on since 2019.
The ruling denied Trump's petition for an en banc rehearing, a request for the full bench of appellate judges to reconsider the case after an earlier panel had already rejected his appeal. The vote split five to three against rehearing, AP News reported, with a dissent arguing the damages were excessive and that Trump deserved broader legal protections.
Judge Denny Chin, writing for the majority, was blunt about the procedural posture. Trump had tried to substitute the United States as the defendant, effectively arguing the federal government, not him personally, should bear liability, but did so well after the trial had concluded and judgment entered.
"The fact of the matter is that no other defendant would be permitted to move to substitute the United States in his place, fifteen months after trial and the entry of judgment against him."
Chin added: "The Court appropriately declined to convene en banc to revisit this issue." That language leaves little room for ambiguity. The appeals court treated Trump's motion the way it would treat any litigant who missed a deadline, it said no.
Carroll alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the early 1990s. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations, and the White House on Wednesday called them "Hoaxes" and "false claims." But two separate juries found against him. An earlier jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages after holding Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse. Then, in 2024, a second jury awarded $83 million in damages after Carroll argued Trump defamed her with statements he made while refuting her allegations.
The appeals court's earlier panel ruling, as Breitbart reported, had already rejected each of Trump's appellate efforts in the case. Wednesday's en banc denial marked the second time in seven months that appeals judges turned aside his challenge to the larger verdict.
Trump also argued that the Supreme Court's 2024 presidential immunity decision should shield him from the suit. The appeals court rejected that claim outright. In its earlier panel ruling, the court wrote that Trump "failed to identify any grounds that would warrant reconsidering our prior holding on presidential immunity" and that "the jury's damages awards are fair and reasonable," Fox News reported.
The court went further, stating that "the degree of reprehensibility" of Trump's conduct was "remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented", language that tracks the legal standard for evaluating whether a damages award is constitutionally excessive. The three dissenting judges evidently disagreed.
A White House spokesperson fired back Wednesday, framing the case as part of a broader pattern of legal actions against the president. The pattern of adverse court rulings has become a recurring feature of Trump's presidency, as seen in his own assessment of the judiciary's posture on other contested issues.
The spokesperson's statement pulled no punches:
"American People stand with President Trump in demanding an immediate end to the unlawful, radical weaponization of our justice system, and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts."
The White House dismissed Carroll's allegations as fabricated, calling them "Hoaxes" and "false claims." Trump himself has consistently denied the underlying accusations throughout the litigation.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll's attorney, issued a statement welcoming the decision. She noted the case's long history, pointing out it was originally filed in 2019.
"E. Jean Carroll is eager for this case, originally filed in 2019, to be over so that she can finally obtain justice."
That framing, "finally obtain justice", signals that Carroll's legal team views the remaining path to the Supreme Court as the last obstacle before enforcing the judgment. Whether the high court takes the case is an open question. The broader pattern of federal courts intervening in politically charged disputes involving the president has drawn scrutiny from conservatives who see institutional bias in the judiciary.
The president may now take his appeal to the Supreme Court. A separate petition involving the earlier $5 million Carroll verdict is already before the justices, the Washington Examiner reported. If the Court agrees to hear either case, it could address the presidential immunity question that the 2nd Circuit rejected, a question with implications far beyond this one lawsuit.
The immunity argument is straightforward in principle: Trump contends that statements he made while serving as president were official acts shielded from civil liability. The 2nd Circuit said no. Whether the Supreme Court sees it differently could reshape the legal exposure of any sitting or former president.
That broader question has animated Trump's legal strategy across multiple fronts. Federal courts have repeatedly been the arena where his policy agenda and personal legal exposure collide, a dynamic visible in split circuit rulings on asylum restrictions and other contested executive actions.
The Just The News account of the ruling noted that Trump argued the Supreme Court's presidential immunity decision should have made him immune from the suit entirely, but the appeals court found that argument unpersuasive in the civil defamation context.
What stands out in Wednesday's ruling is less the substance of the immunity debate and more the procedural ground on which the court planted its flag. Judge Chin's opinion emphasized timing. Trump moved to substitute the United States as a defendant fifteen months after trial and entry of judgment. The court treated that as disqualifying on its own terms, before even reaching the merits of the immunity claim.
That procedural framing matters. It means the 2nd Circuit did not have to decide whether presidential immunity would have applied if raised earlier. It simply said Trump was too late. For Trump's legal team, that is both a loss and a narrow one, it preserves the immunity argument for the Supreme Court without a definitive appellate ruling against it on the merits.
For Carroll, the procedural ground is just as useful. Every failed motion, every denied petition, brings her closer to collecting on a combined $88 million in jury awards. The Supreme Court's track record on emergency appeals involving the president has itself become a point of contention, with justices openly disagreeing about how to handle the volume and pace of such filings.
Several things remain unclear. The New York Post noted that the appeals court found the damages justified in part because Trump continued making defamatory statements about Carroll during the civil trial itself, a detail that could complicate any Supreme Court argument that the award was excessive.
Will the Supreme Court agree to hear either Carroll case? The justices have not yet acted on the petition involving the $5 million verdict. If they decline both, Trump's legal options are exhausted and Carroll can move to enforce. If they take one or both, the immunity question gets a definitive answer, one that will matter for every future president.
The White House clearly views the entire litigation as politically motivated. Carroll's legal team views it as a straightforward defamation case that has survived every challenge thrown at it. The 2nd Circuit, for its part, has now ruled against Trump at every stage.
Whatever one thinks of the underlying allegations, the procedural reality is plain: a sitting president asked a federal court for special treatment fifteen months after losing at trial, and the court said the answer would be the same for anyone. That is either the system working as designed or a system blind to the unique pressures of the presidency. The Supreme Court may soon have to decide which.
