Trump's lawyers plan a Supreme Court petition invoking presidential immunity to challenge the $83 million Carroll defamation verdict, a first-of-its-kind civil immunity claim.
President Donald Trump's legal team has indicated it will file a petition asking the Supreme Court to vacate the $83 million defamation verdict entered against Trump in favor of E. Jean Carroll, arguing that presidential immunity shields him from civil liability for statements he made while serving as president [1]. The anticipated petition would mark the first time a sitting or former president has sought to extend the immunity doctrine into purely private civil defamation litigation, moving well beyond the criminal-prosecution context in which the Court addressed presidential immunity in 2024 [1].
The Carroll defamation case has produced two separate judgments against Trump in federal court in the Southern District of New York. Carroll, represented by attorney Roberta Kaplan, secured the larger $83 million verdict after a jury found Trump liable for defamatory statements he made while in office denying her sexual-assault allegations [1]. Trump's lawyers, operating through the James Otis Law Group, are now pursuing parallel tracks: the anticipated Supreme Court petition on immunity grounds, and a separate effort to substitute the U.S. government as the defendant in the litigation, a maneuver that would effectively transfer liability to federal taxpayers [1]. Carroll cannot move to collect on either judgment while those petitions remain pending, leaving enforcement in suspension [1].
The substantive stakes are considerable. The Supreme Court's 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States established broad presidential immunity for official acts in the criminal context, but the Court did not address civil exposure [1]. If the justices were to grant certiorari and extend that reasoning to private civil suits, the decision would erect a near-absolute barrier against defamation claims targeting a president's in-office speech, regardless of whether that speech concerned official duties in any conventional sense [1]. The government-substitution theory compounds the question: courts would have to determine whether denials of personal misconduct, made on a president's personal social-media accounts and in press statements, qualify as official-capacity conduct under the Westfall Act [1].
Carroll's legal team is expected to oppose any substitution motion and to resist certiorari on the immunity petition [1]. No filing date has been set publicly for the Supreme Court petition, and the Second Circuit has already ruled against Trump's immunity arguments at the appellate level [1]. Whether the current Court, having already expanded presidential immunity significantly, accepts a vehicle to extend that doctrine into civil defamation will be among the more consequential cert decisions of the next term [1].