E. Jean Carroll Wins Again as Supreme Court Leaves Trump’s $5 Million Verdict in Place
ri5atd2o95912y26rxjy15l0qd0d1.71 MBE. Jean Carroll Wins Again as Supreme Court Leaves Trump’s $5 Million Verdict in Place
The ruling means Donald Trump’s long fight to escape the civil judgment for sexual abuse and defamation has reached the end of the road.
By Michele Evans New York City, New York 6/29/2026
Category: Courts / Public Interest
NEW YORK CITY, NY - E. Jean Carroll has outlasted him.
After years of denials, appeals, attacks, and legal delay, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Donald Trump’s appeal of the $5 million civil verdict against him, leaving intact the jury’s finding that he sexually abused and defamed Carroll.
That means the judgment stands.
For Carroll, now 82, this is more than a courtroom win. It is a public record that survived the pressure of power, fame, intimidation, and endless litigation.
A Manhattan federal jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a Midtown department store in the 1990s and later defamed her when he denied her allegations. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
Trump appealed. He lost.
Then he asked the Supreme Court to step in.
On Monday, the Court refused.
That refusal does not erase what Carroll endured. It does not undo the years it took to be believed. It does not repair the public humiliation that so often follows survivors who speak against powerful men.
But it does something important.
It lets the verdict stand.
It says the jury’s decision remains the law of the case.
It says Carroll does not have to start over.
And it says Trump cannot appeal his way out of this judgment forever.
Carroll’s larger $83.3 million defamation award, tied to a separate case, remains on its own legal track. But this $5 million verdict is now beyond Trump’s reach at the Supreme Court.
That matters because survivors are often told, directly or indirectly, that justice is impossible when the person accused has more money, more lawyers, more status, or more political power.
Carroll’s case became a test of whether a woman could accuse one of the most powerful men in the world, endure years of public attacks, go before a jury, win, and still have that verdict survive.
On Monday, it did.
This was not a criminal conviction. It was a civil case. But civil accountability is still accountability.
For years, Trump denied Carroll’s allegations and attacked her credibility. A jury heard the evidence. The appeals court upheld the verdict. And now the Supreme Court has declined to disturb it.
That is a victory.
Not just for E. Jean Carroll.
For every survivor who has ever been told they waited too long.
For every woman who has ever been called a liar for naming what happened to her.
For every person who has watched powerful men use delay as a weapon.
E. Jean Carroll stayed standing.
And now, Donald Trump has to pay.
*Michele Evansis an independent journalist, author, and former ESPN technical producer whose work has appeared in The New York Times.
Michele got her start in 2001 covering the NBA and NFL.
She now covers New York City courts, criminal-justice procedure, NYPD, FDNY, domestic-violence systems, media accountability, public safety, advocacy efforts, and New York civic life through courthouse observation, public records, legal analysis, and lived-experience reporting.
