The Supreme Court on Monday morning turned down President Donald Trump’s request to reconsider the justices’ denial of review in a civil suit brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll, which yielded a $5 million verdict against the president. The announcement came as part of the second of three scheduled “summer order lists.”
Consistent with its general practice, the court did not provide any explanation for its decision to deny Trump’s petition for rehearing in Trump v. Carroll. The court rarely grants such petitions; indeed, it has not done so since 2018.
Summer order lists normally serve as an opportunity for the justices to clear out some of the pending requests for action – particularly petitions for rehearing – that accrue between the end of June or early July, when they hold their final conference before their summer recess, and late September, when they return and hold the so-called “long conference.” Although the court ordinarily does not add new cases to its merits docket, it sometimes opts to do so, as it did on July 20, when it granted review in Jouppi v. Alaska.
Carroll filed the lawsuit at the center of the dispute in 2022. She alleged that in 1996 Trump had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at a New York department store and then in 2022, after she went public with her assault allegations, defamed her.
After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld the jury’s verdict, Trump went to the Supreme Court. In a petition filed in November 2025, he argued that Carroll should not have been allowed to introduce testimony by other women who also alleged that Trump had assaulted them, as well as the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.
Carroll urged the justices to turn down Trump’s appeal. She argued that even if the introduction of the evidence was improper, it ultimately did not matter because the rest of her case was so strong.
Although the justices were initially slated to consider Trump’s original petition for review at their Feb. 20, 2026, conference, they put off doing so until their June 25 conference and denied it four days later.