Federal Appeals Court Refuses To Reconsider Donald Trump’s $5 Million Loss To E. Jean Carroll For Sexual Abuse

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Alessio AtriaJune 24, 2025, 11:15 pmNews >

A federal appeals court has denied Donald Trump’s request to reconsider the $5 million verdict won by journalist E. Jean Carroll against him.

In an 8-2 vote, the second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s petition for the full appellate court to reconsider claims in his challenge to the jury’s finding that he sexually abused Carroll and defamed her with remarks he made in October 2022.

The $5 million verdict included $2.98 million for defamation as well as $2.02 million for sexual assault.

Carroll testified at a 2023 trial that the president assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan during an encounter in the 1990s.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld the verdict in December 2024, denying Trump’s claims that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s decisions damaged the trial.

In an opinion made public on Friday, Judges Myrna Pérez, Eunice C. Lee, Beth Robinson and Sarah A.L. Merriam, who voted to reject rehearing, wrote that “simply re-litigating a case is not an appropriate use” of the process.

The judges also said that “in those rare instances in which a case warrants our collective consideration, it is almost always because it involves a question of exceptional importance” or even a conflict between precedent and the appellate panel’s opinion.

The two dissenting judges, Trump appointees Steven J. Menashi and Michael H. Park, wrote that the trial included “a series of indefensible evidentiary rulings.”

“The result was a jury verdict based on impermissible character evidence and few reliable facts,” they said. “No one can have any confidence that the jury would have returned the same verdict if the normal rules of evidence had been applied.”

“E. Jean Carroll is very pleased with today’s decision,” Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, mentioned in a statement.

“Although President Trump continues to try every possible maneuver to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have failed,” Kaplan, who is not related to Judge Kaplan, added. “He remains liable for sexual assault and defamation.”

Kaplan was the one who ordered the jury in the recent trial to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll. Arguments in that appeal are scheduled for June 24.

The president is also appealing an $83 million verdict to Carroll for defaming her and harming her reputation when he denied her claim in 2019.

In Trump’s appeal against this January 2024 ruling, he is claiming that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to give sweeping legal immunity to presidents should protect him from liability in this instance as well.