The Supreme Court has rescheduled Trump's $5 million Carroll cert. petition 11 times, as a DOJ substitution maneuver in the related $83.3 million case complicates the Court's path.
The Supreme Court has rescheduled consideration of Donald Trump's petition for certiorari in the $5 million Carroll sexual abuse and defamation case for the 11th consecutive time, with no explanation offered for the repeated deferrals [1]. The Court first took up the petition for conference and has since declined, at each successive conference, to grant, deny, or hold the petition, an unusual pattern that has now stretched across months of the Court's calendar [1].
The petition arises from a May 2023 jury verdict finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarding E. Jean Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages [1]. That case is separate from a second Carroll defamation suit, which produced an $83.3 million jury verdict in January 2024 [1]. Trump has signaled his intent to seek Supreme Court review of that larger verdict as well, and the convergence of the two petitions is widely viewed as a factor in the Court's hesitation to act on the first [1].
The procedural stakes are complicated further by a move from the Department of Justice. The DOJ has asked courts to substitute the United States government for Trump as the defendant in the second Carroll defamation case, on the theory that Trump was acting within the scope of his employment as a federal officer when he denied Carroll's allegations in 2019 [2]. Brett Shumate, a senior DOJ official, has been identified as a key figure in advancing that substitution argument [2]. If accepted, the maneuver would convert Carroll's claim from a suit against Trump personally into one governed by the Federal Tort Claims Act, which bars punitive damages and caps recovery, effectively nullifying the $83.3 million award [2].
The DOJ's substitution theory raises novel questions that sit at the intersection of presidential immunity doctrine and government tort liability, questions the Court may prefer to address in a consolidated or coordinated posture rather than piecemeal [1] [2]. The 11 reschedules suggest the justices are not yet prepared to accept, deny, or hold either petition in isolation.
The immediate next step is the Court's next conference, where the first Carroll petition could again be rescheduled, denied, or granted [1]. How the Court disposes of the DOJ's substitution request in the lower courts, and when Trump formally files a cert. petition in the $83.3 million case, will likely determine whether the justices ultimately consolidate both matters or address them separately.