Month: September 2025

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld an $83 million defamation verdict against President Donald Trump, rejecting his bid to overturn the judgment awarded to former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in 2019.

Trump’s lawyers had argued the case should be dismissed, saying it inflicted “severe damage to the presidency” and represented a “great miscarriage of justice.” Carroll’s attorneys countered that no one, including a sitting president, is above the law.

Last year, a Manhattan jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in January 2024 after finding Trump repeatedly defamed her in 2019 – both during and after his presidency – when he denied sexually abusing her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. The amount Trump owes has continued to grow due to New York’s 9% annual interest rate on judgments.

In its ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Pres. Trump failed to provide any legal basis to revisit earlier findings on presidential immunity. The three-judge panel wrote in reference to the punitive damages imposed that “Trump has failed to identify any grounds that would warrant reconsidering our prior holding on presidential immunity. We also conclude that the district court did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury’s damages awards are fair and reasonable.” 

The panel added that: “Trump acted with, at a minimum, reckless disregard for the truth” when he called Carroll a liar and said she’s not his type. The panel said the $18.3 million the jury awarded Carroll in compensatory damages was fair, writing: “After Trump released his statements, which were viewed by between 85.8 to 104 million people, Carroll was instantly and continuously attacked on Twitter and Facebook and in emails. She received thousands of such attacks, including hundreds of death threats.”

Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, welcomed the ruling, saying her client is looking forward to the appeals process coming to an end so “justice will finally be done.”

Carroll first went public in 2019 with allegations that Trump sexually assaulted in the mid-1990s. Trump has consistently denied Carroll’s allegations and any wrongdoing, calling them a “hoax” and accusing Carroll of fabricating the story to promote her book.  Carroll went on to file two separate lawsuits — the first, tied to Trump’s statements while in office, led to the $83 million award. The second, made possible under a temporary New York law allowing expired sexual assault claims to proceed, included allegations of the assault itself and defamatory remarks Trump made after leaving office. In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, ordering him to pay Carroll $5 million.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court order that had restricted federal immigration officers from conducting certain patrols in Los Angeles and other areas of Southern California. The ruling clears the way for President Trump to resume sweeping immigration enforcement stops in the region, as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to carry out mass deportations of people in the U.S. unlawfully.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents also step up enforcement in Washington amid Trump’s unprecedented federal takeover of the capital city’s law enforcement and deployment of the National Guard. The high court issued a short order without explanation; with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing separately that he questioned whether constitutional violations had occurred. He noted that given Los Angeles’ sizable undocumented immigrant population—many of whom gather at day-labor sites, work in construction, or speak little English—officers could often claim reasonable suspicion in practice: “”Especially in an immigration case like this one, it is also important to stress the proper role of the Judiciary. The Judiciary does not set immigration policy or decide enforcement priorities.”

By granting an emergency request, the justices temporarily set aside a July 11 ruling by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles that prevented federal immigration authorities from stopping people in Southern California without reasonable suspicion that they are in the U.S. unlawfully. That order barred officials from relying solely on certain factors like a person’s race or occupation as the basis for a detentive stop.

Immigrant advocacy groups and workers’ organizations contended the policy violated the Fourth Amendment, which requires law enforcement to establish “reasonable suspicion” before making stops. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Frimpong’s order on August 1, prompting the administration to seek relief from the Supreme Court.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the injunction issued by the district court hampered the ability of immigration authorities to enforce the nation’s immigration laws in Los Angeles and put them at risk of violating its order during routine investigative stops.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented alongside the other two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She condemned the ruling, warning that it opened the door to discriminatory practices: “we should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” Sotomayor wrote adding that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful searches and seizures, should protect everyone: “After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”

Editorial credit: Josiah True / Shutterstock.com