US Supreme Court rejects Trump's appeal, confirming $5 million payout in sexual abuse case

The US Supreme Court on Monday (local time) rejected President Donald Trump's request to reconsider a ruling against him in a sexual abuse case, leaving intact a lower court verdict ordering him to pay $5 million to fashion columnist E. Jean Carroll.

The court denied Trump's petition to review the civil sexual abuse case he lost in 2023, according to the Associated Press and The New York Times. It gave no reasons for its decision, and no dissenting opinions were made public.

A jury at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York had ordered Trump in May 2023 — before he returned to the presidency — to pay Carroll $5 million. Carroll alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store in Manhattan, in 1996.

The jury found no evidence of rape but determined that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, and the court ordered him to pay $5 million in damages. An appeals court upheld that verdict, after which Trump petitioned the Supreme Court last November to take up the case.

Carroll has also filed a separate defamation lawsuit against Trump seeking compensatory damages. A trial court ruled in January 2024 that Trump must pay $83.3 million (about 128.5 billion won) in damages, a decision a federal appeals court upheld last September.

Trump's legal team plans to petition the Supreme Court to take up that case as well.

The New York Times described Monday's Supreme Court decision as "a significant blow" to Trump, saying his legal efforts to challenge the jury's finding that he sexually abused Carroll in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s had in effect come to an end.