When the justices meet for their private conference on Thursday, there is one high-profile petition for review they will not consider, even though it has been fully briefed since late January: an appeal by President Donald Trump seeking review of the $5 million jury verdict entered against him in the sexual abuse and defamation case filed by journalist E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll filed the lawsuit that led to the verdict in a federal court in New York in 2022. She contended that in 1996 Trump had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store and then had defamed her in a 2022 social media post in which he described her accusations as (among other things) a “Hoax.”
The jury sided with Carroll and awarded her $5 million. A federal appeals court then upheld that verdict.
Trump came to the Supreme Court in November 2025, asking the justices to take up his case. In particular, he argued, Carroll’s lawyers 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 court to deny review. She emphasized that even if the jury should not have been allowed to consider the evidence, it ultimately would not have made a difference because the rest of her case was so strong.
On Jan. 28, the court “distributed” – that is, officially sent the briefs to the justices – the case for it to consider at its Feb. 20 conference. One day before that conference, however, the court “rescheduled” the case – that is, postponed its consideration of Trump’s petition. When the court reschedules a case, it does not provide an explanation; the rescheduling simply appears as a notation on the court’s electronic docket.
Over the past three months, the court has continued to reschedule Trump’s case – most recently on Wednesday, for the 11th time. There is no way to know what is going on behind the scenes, but the delay may be related to a separate defamation case involving Carroll. In that case, Trump has indicated not only that he plans to ask the Supreme Court to review a ruling by the same federal appeals court that upheld an $83 million verdict in Carroll’s favor, but also that he is seeking to have the U.S. government take his place in the lawsuit because he was president when he made the statements at the center of the case.