Donald Trump has had a Supreme Court petition pending for months in one of the defamation cases he lost against writer E. Jean Carroll. He’s about to file another one — and it’s going to involve presidential immunity.
The court doesn’t have to review either claim. But even if the justices deny review, Carroll won’t be able to collect on the millions of dollars in damages she won until then.
Of course, if the justices agree to review either or both of Trump’s appeals, then that will raise the question of whether the damages stand, a question that wouldn’t be answered until the justices rule in that hypothetical scenario. It takes four justices to grant review of a petition.
The high court isn’t on a deadline to decide whether to take up either appeal. But here is where they both stand.
The already pending petition is for the case in which a New York City jury awarded $5 million in damages in 2023 after finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll in 1996 and defamed her in 2022. He argues that the trial judge wrongly admitted evidence against him, including the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. He argues that his appeal gives the justices a chance to resolve important questions about how courts use evidence. Opposing review, Carroll’s lawyers argue that there’s no good reason for the justices to get involved.
Though the petition has been pending for months, it hasn’t made it to the court’s private conference where the justices decide which new cases to take up. The court keeps rescheduling it. It’s unclear why. But the bottom line is that the court hasn’t yet decided whether to grant or deny review in the $5 million case. The next chance for the justices to consider that petition is at their next conference on May 14.
Barring an urgent situation that these cases don’t present, any new appeals granted review at this point in the court’s term wouldn’t be argued until the following term, which starts in October.
Meanwhile, a petition in the other case, in which Carroll won $83.3 million in defamation damages, is on its way to the justices. That’s according to a new court filing from the president that described the petition as “upcoming.” That filing was lodged Tuesday in the New York-based federal appeals court where he has failed to overturn his trial court losses.
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The new filing asks the appeals court to halt its latest ruling against Trump from taking effect while he challenges it at the Supreme Court. Without such procedural relief, he argues, he “may immediately be required to bear the burdens of proceedings to execute on the judgment of $83.3 million.” Carroll doesn’t oppose the motion. Assuming the appeals court grants it, that further highlights the stakes of the forthcoming petition, which Trump argued in the filing will present important issues, including on presidential immunity.
The Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States was about criminal immunity, and these appeals deal with civil matters. Still, Trump argues the ruling helps him in the $83.3 million case, which stems from statements he made while he was president during his first term.
In Tuesday’s appellate filing, Trump said his petition will raise at least these two issues: “(1) whether the President’s absolute immunity from civil claims based on official acts can be waived at all (President Trump maintains that such immunity cannot be waived), or at least without an explicit and unequivocal renunciation of the immunity; and (2) whether the United States timely filed, and did not waive, a renewed Westfall Act certification.”
The Westfall Act issue relates to the federal government’s ability to intervene as the defendant in the case. On that note, in a separate filing to the appeals court Tuesday, the Justice Department said it will bring its own Supreme Court petition on that issue. So, Trump will have support from the federal government in his personal appeal.
In both of the Carroll appeals, the president is personally represented by Justin Smith, whom Trump has nominated to a federal judgeship. Smith practices at the James Otis Law Group, where John Sauer, who argued the immunity case on Trump’s behalf, practiced before Trump named him to be the DOJ’s top Supreme Court lawyer. Announcing his judicial nomination earlier this year, the president said Smith “also played a BIG role in securing a Supreme Court Landmark Victory on Presidential Immunity.”
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Jordan Rubin
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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