The Supreme Court placed Trump's $5M Carroll cert petition on conference for May 28 after 11 reschedulings, as justices weigh coordinating it with the $83.3M defamation case.
The Supreme Court has placed Donald Trump's petition for certiorari in the E. Jean Carroll $5 million sexual abuse and defamation case on its conference docket for May 28, 2026, the eleventh rescheduling of that conference since the petition was first distributed in November 2025 [1]. The repeated delays are widely attributed to the Court's apparent intent to coordinate consideration of this petition with a separate, forthcoming petition seeking review of the $83.3 million defamation judgment Carroll obtained against Trump in a second trial [2]. The Second Circuit denied en banc rehearing in the $83.3 million case in April 2026, removing the final appellate obstacle to that second petition [2].
The $5 million verdict arose from a federal civil jury finding in the Southern District of New York that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and defamed her in subsequent public statements [1]. The petition currently before the Court, docketed as No. 25-573, asks the justices to review whether Trump's public denials of Carroll's account qualified as official acts protected by presidential immunity [1]. The $83.3 million matter raises the additional question of whether the Westfall Act, which substitutes the United States as defendant for federal employees acting within the scope of their duties, extends to a sitting president's public communications [2]. The Department of Justice, under the current administration, has supported Trump's Westfall Act argument before the Second Circuit [3].
The legal stakes are substantial. No Supreme Court decision has extended the presidential immunity framework articulated in Trump v. United States, the Court's 2024 criminal immunity ruling, into civil tort law [2]. A grant of certiorari in either or both cases would require the Court to determine the outer boundary of that doctrine, with direct implications for whether any civil plaintiff can hold a president personally liable for conduct alleged to fall within the broad scope of official duties [1].
Trump's counsel has separately asked the Second Circuit to pause enforcement of the Carroll judgments pending a Supreme Court decision, a request that signals confidence that at least one petition will be granted [3]. If the Court takes up one or both cases, oral argument would likely be calendared for the Court's October 2026 term. A denial on May 28 would return both matters to the district court for enforcement proceedings.