A federal appeals court on Monday affirmed an $83.3 million defamation judgment in favor of writer E. Jean Carroll, concluding that a Manhattan jury reasonably punished President Donald Trump for repeatedly branding her 2019 sexual-assault allegation as a lie. The three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the award of $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages was “fair and reasonable,” and warranted by the record. The decision, issued Sept. 8, came in Carroll v. Trump, No. 24-644, before Judges Denny Chin, Sarah A.L. Merriam, and Myrna Pérez Kahn.

The court rejected Trump’s attempt to invoke presidential immunity based on the Supreme Court’s 2024 criminal-immunity ruling, holding that the defense does not shield him from this civil defamation case and, in any event, had been waived because it was not timely raised earlier in the litigation. The panel noted it had already ruled in 2023 that Trump waived absolute presidential immunity, and found no reason to revisit that conclusion.

Writing per curiam, the court pointed to Trump’s sustained attacks on Carroll, spanning years and intensifying as trial neared, when upholding the size of the punitive award. The opinion recounted that Trump repeated similar statements during the 2024 damages trial and even pledged online to keep saying them “a thousand times.” In light of those circumstances, the court said the 3.6-to-1 punitive-to-compensatory ratio stayed within constitutional bounds.

The panel also detailed the compensatory damages, which included $7.3 million for reputational harm and emotional distress and $11 million for a reputation-repair program. The court cited evidence of widespread threats and harassment Carroll received after Trump’s statements, her loss of her longtime Elle column, and a steep drop in other work.

Monday’s decision follows a separate Second Circuit ruling earlier this year that upheld a $5 million verdict against Trump stemming from similar statements he made about Carroll in 2022. That earlier case, tried in 2023, found Trump liable for sexual abuse under New York law and for defamation; the appeals court affirmed in June.

Carroll has alleged that Trump assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. When she went public in 2019, Trump—then president—said he had never met her, suggested she fabricated the story for personal or political gain, and disparaged her appearance. Monday’s opinion emphasized that the 2019 and 2022 statements shared the same themes and were false in light of the earlier jury’s findings, which the district court properly used to preclude relitigation of key issues at the damages trial.

Trump’s legal team denounced the ruling, calling the Carroll cases politically motivated and vowing to continue fighting. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, welcomed the decision and said they look forward to the end of the appeals.

The Second Circuit’s judgment caps a months-long appellate battle that also included Trump’s unsuccessful bid to substitute the United States as the defendant under the Westfall Act—a request the court denied in August. Trump may now ask the Supreme Court to review the case, but the $83.3 million judgment remains intact unless the justices intervene.

Case details: Carroll v. Trump, No. 24-644 (2d Cir. argued June 24, 2025; decided Sept. 8, 2025); appeal from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s judgment in the Southern District of New York. Opinion by a panel of Judges Chin, Merriam, and Kahn; judgment affirmed in full.