“The case has been sitting in front of the justices for months. What is unusual now is not the appeal itself, but how long the court has kept refusing to move it.”
Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the jury verdict in the E. Jean Carroll case has hit another delay at the US Supreme Court, stretching out a legal fight that has already dragged on for years and leaving one of the most politically explosive cases tied to the president hanging in limbo.
The case before the justices is the $5 million verdict from Carroll’s 2022 civil lawsuit, where a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her. Trump has been trying to wipe out that judgment, arguing that the trial should not have included testimony from other women who accused him of sexual misconduct and should not have allowed jurors to hear the “Access Hollywood” tape.
But instead of deciding whether to hear the case, the Supreme Court has now rescheduled it 15 times, an unusually long delay for an appeal like this. CNN reported that the case was pulled from a private justices’ conference in February and has kept returning to the court’s internal agenda without a public explanation.
That silence is what has made the delay stand out.
The Supreme Court almost never explains why it keeps holding or rescheduling an appeal, and there could be several reasons. One possibility is that one or more justices are drafting something related to the case. Another is that the court may be waiting for Trump’s separate appeal in Carroll’s $83 million defamation case to arrive so both matters can be considered together. Trump’s lawyers have already signaled that they intend to ask the Supreme Court to review that second case too.
For now, the delay works in Trump’s favour.
SEE ALSO: Justice Department opens investigation into E. Jean Carroll years after Trump lawsuits
The longer the case sits unresolved, the longer the $5 million verdict remains tied up in appeals. Trump is also not being forced to pay Carroll’s separate $83 million defamation award yet, after a federal appeals court allowed him to delay payment while the Supreme Court gets a chance to review or reject that appeal.
Carroll’s legal battle with Trump has unfolded in two major cases.
In the first trial to reach a jury, Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and then defaming her when he denied it. That case ended with the $5 million judgment now sitting at the Supreme Court. In a second case, focused on statements Trump made in 2019 denying her accusation and attacking her credibility, another jury awarded Carroll $83 million in damages.
Trump has repeatedly denied Carroll’s allegations and has cast both cases as politically motivated attacks. His lawyers told the Supreme Court earlier this year that it was damaging for a sitting president to remain tied up in what they called decades-old false allegations. Carroll’s lawyers, on the other hand, have argued that the lower courts handled the case properly and that there is no reason for the justices to intervene.
What makes this latest pause more striking is how little the public knows about it.
Usually, when the Supreme Court is seriously considering a case, it may relist it for another conference. But in this instance, the appeal has been rescheduled over and over again, which suggests it may not even be getting formally discussed each time it appears on the court’s calendar. Legal analysts say that is unusual, especially in a case with this level of political heat.
So the case is still alive, but it is also stuck.
Trump has not won anything yet. Carroll has not been fully paid. And the Supreme Court has not said a word about why one of the most sensitive appeals involving the president has been left sitting for so long.
For now, the only clear thing is that the legal fight is not close to ending.
