The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear President Trump’s appeal in the first E. Jean Carroll civil case.
The June 29, 2026 order list places docket 25-573, Trump, President of US v. Carroll, E. Jean, under the heading CERTIORARI DENIED.
A denial of certiorari is not a merits judgment. The justices simply declined to take the case, and the order list shows no written merits explanation and no noted dissent on that line.
That distinction matters here because Trump’s appeal was not a broad attempt to relitigate the whole lawsuit. It was a targeted challenge to how the trial judge handled the evidence.
JUST IN: US Supreme Court rebuffs Trump’s appeal in E. Jean Carroll case https://t.co/rrzYFXHvIB pic.twitter.com/iy35Dl8EOY
— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) June 29, 2026
The official Supreme Court docket lists President Trump as petitioner and E Jean Carroll as respondent in docket 25-573.
It is linked with application 25A250, the earlier extension request that gave Trump’s team until November 10, 2025 to file.
According to the Supreme Court docket, the case came up from the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, case 23-793, with a December 30, 2024 affirmance and rehearing denied June 13, 2025.
Trump’s petition was filed November 10, 2025, and Carroll’s opposition brief followed on January 14, 2026.
The docket also shows several amicus briefs on Trump’s side, including filings from America First Legal Foundation, Citizens United, Article III Project, and Iowa with other states.
After that, the petition was distributed and rescheduled for conference over and over again from February through late June before landing on Monday’s order list. That long conference trail makes the final denial especially notable, and the docket is the clean official timeline for how the case reached this point.
The legal heart of the appeal was the evidence the jury was allowed to see and hear.
Trump’s Supreme Court petition raised questions about FRE 415, FRE 413, and FRE 404(b), along with the FRE 403 balancing test that is supposed to weigh prejudice against probative value.
The petition asked whether FRE 415 and FRE 413 allowed temporally remote propensity evidence without ordinary FRE 403 balancing. It also questioned whether FRE 404(b)(2) opened the door to the Access Hollywood tape and other prior-act evidence as modus operandi or corroboration.
The filing pointed specifically to the admitted testimony of Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, and argued the Second Circuit deepened existing circuit conflicts over how those evidence standards apply.
In short, Trump’s lawyers said the trial was loaded with other-accuser testimony and a decades-old tape that should never have reached the jury. The Court chose not to weigh in.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court has denied President Trump’s appeal of the $5 million jury finding in the 2022 defamation case brought against him by the writer E. Jean Carroll. https://t.co/kUUsOIOZhg
— ABC News (@ABC) June 29, 2026
NBC News reported that the denial leaves the 2023 jury verdict and the $5 million civil judgment in place. That is the immediate practical effect of Monday’s order.
NBC noted the dispute traces back to Carroll’s Manhattan lawsuit over an alleged 1996 department-store incident and later defamation claims.
Trump denies the allegations and has from the start, with his lawyers pointing to the lack of a police report, the lack of witnesses, and the years that passed before Carroll sued.
The network also summarized Trump’s evidentiary objections, including his argument that the trial judge should not have allowed the other-accuser testimony or the Access Hollywood tape to reach jurors. Those objections were central to the appeal.
Carroll’s lawyers, by contrast, argued in court papers that the trial judge correctly allowed the evidence under the federal evidence standards.
The New York Post reported that the Court declined to take up the appeal of the $5 million verdict in the first Carroll case. That report is useful because it separates this first case from the later, larger defamation judgment.
The Post framed the Monday development as the end of high-court review for that first Carroll verdict, while noting that Trump has continued to deny Carroll’s accusations.
It also flagged the bigger number still in play: a separate Manhattan federal defamation judgment of $83.3 million from another Carroll case.
That second case remains on appeal in the lower courts, so the broader Carroll legal fight is not finished. Monday’s denial does not end that separate appeal.
For now, Monday’s order closes one chapter without the justices ever endorsing the trial that produced it.
The $5 million judgment stands, the larger appeal continues, and Trump’s position on the underlying claims has not changed.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
