US President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice have filed separate petitions with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn an $83.3 million defamation verdict awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll, escalating a years-long legal battle between the president and the former magazine columnist.

Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store in New York City, in 1996. She first made the allegations public in a 2019 memoir and subsequently sued Trump for defamation after he publicly dismissed her account, saying she was fabricating the story for personal gain and that she was "not my type." A Manhattan jury awarded her $83.3 million in January 2024, a sum that included substantial punitive damages, after finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and for damaging her reputation. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

Trump's personal lawyers are arguing that his statements about Carroll constitute "official acts" of the presidency, seeking to extend the logic of the Supreme Court's landmark 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States, which broadened the concept of presidential immunity in criminal cases. Lower courts have so far rejected that approach, with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruling against it in September of last year, noting that the 2024 immunity precedent applies only to criminal prosecution, not civil cases. The Justice Department, for its part, is invoking the Westfall Act, a federal law that shields government employees from civil lawsuits for actions taken within the scope of their official duties, arguing that it should allow the administration to substitute itself as the defendant in place of Trump personally. "Absent this Court's intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office," federal attorneys wrote in their filing.

This is the second time Trump has sought Supreme Court relief in the Carroll litigation. In June, the justices declined to hear his appeal of a separate $5 million verdict — which had grown to nearly $5.8 million with accrued interest — stemming from a 2022 case in which a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation for remarks made after his first term ended. A federal judge has since ordered that amount paid out. The New York-based appeals court, while rejecting the appeal of the larger verdict, agreed to delay that payout pending the Supreme Court's decision on whether to take up the case.

Whether the court will agree to hear the appeal remains uncertain. The case raises novel constitutional questions about the limits of presidential immunity in civil proceedings — questions that no American court has previously been asked to answer in this context. A decision to accept or reject the appeal would carry significant implications for the scope of legal accountability for sitting and former presidents.