WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a $83.3 million jury award he was ordered to pay writer E. Jean Carroll, arguing the judgment could permanently leave presidents fearful of civil liability for actions they take in office.
"If left standing, the decision below will cause significant damage, not only to this President and future Presidents, but also to 'the Nation that the Presidency was designed to serve,'" Trump's lawyers said in a July 28 filing. "As this Court has recognized, it 'would seriously cripple the proper and effective administration of' government if Presidents feared that their official acts could result in damages liability."
But the court already rejected Trump's appeal in a related case
about more than $5 million that a jury said Trump must pay Carroll.
Both cases are part of a legal battle between Trump and Carroll that dates back to 2019 and includes two civil trials.
Carroll said in 2019 that Trump sexually assaulted her at a New York City department store in 1996, and Trump fired back with allegations that she was making up the story to sell her book.
Carroll sued him months later, eventually winning the $83.3 million judgment for damages.
As the case was ongoing, Trump repeated the denial in a 2022 social media post. Carroll then sued Trump again under a special window of time that New York granted to sexual abuse survivors, and in 2023, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse against Carroll. This resulted in the $5 million verdict.
Federal appeals courts upheld both judgments.
Trump has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its rejection of his appeal of the $5 million verdict, a move that is rarely successful.
Carroll’s lawyers declined comment on Trump's latest filing.
But in rejecting Trump’s appeal of the trial court judgment in September, the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the $83.3 million judgement was reasonable “in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case.” The court said the starting point of its review “is the now-indisputable fact that a jury found in (the other case) that Trump sexually abused Carroll in 1996," which precludes another appeal.
"The record in this case supports the district court's determination that the ‘the degree of reprehensibility' of Mr. Trump's conduct was remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented,’” the appeals court wrote in its opinion.
Trump’s repeated comments about Carroll resulted in “a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury,” the appeals court said. The jury was allowed to find that Trump would not stop defaming Carroll unless he was hit with a substantial financial penalty, the court continued.
Trump’s lawyers have argued he should have immunity for his 2019 comments about Carroll because he made them while serving as president.
"That use of official Presidential statements matters, because this Court has made clear that official Presidential acts may not be used as evidence to impose liability for other conduct,” his lawyers have told the justices, referencing the court's 2024 ruling that presidents can't be criminally prosecuted for “official” acts taken by a president.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump asks Supreme Court to throw out $83M award to E. Jean Carroll
