NEW YORK — The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on April 29, 2026 declined to rehear en banc President Donald Trump's appeal of an $83 million defamation verdict awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll. Five judges voted against rehearing the case, while three voted in favor.

The decision followed a September 2025 ruling in which a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit rejected Trump's appeal of the verdict. Judge Denny Chin wrote that it was the fourth time the court had denied a request for an en banc hearing in the case.

Judges Steven J. Menashi, Michael H. Park, and Debra Ann Livingston voted in favor of an en banc rehearing.

"Put together, these proceedings represent a manifest miscarriage of justice," Menashi wrote in his dissent. He wrote that the appeals panel should have let the United States be substituted for Trump as defendant after the attorney general certified that he was acting in the scope of his office when the claim arose, and that Trump should have been able to argue that he was protected by presidential immunity. Menashi wrote that Trump should be granted a new trial and that the size of the defamation award was excessive.

Chin wrote that the record showed Trump made multiple statements over many years accusing Carroll of lying for political and financial gain and suggesting she was too unattractive for him to have sexually assaulted her. He wrote that Trump showed no remorse and continued his attacks against Carroll during and after two federal trials.

Carroll publicly asserted in a 2019 memoir that Trump had sexually abused her in the 1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman store's dressing room. In an interview, Trump said he had never met Carroll and that her accusation was false. "She's not my type," Trump said.

Carroll sued Trump for defamation in November 2019. A jury found in May 2023 that Trump had sexually abused Carroll and later defamed her. Trump did not attend that trial. He testified in January 2024 at a second trial, when a jury awarded Carroll $83 million for defamation.