U.S. President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to vacate an “exorbitant” ruling that ordered him to pay $83 million to writer E. Jean Carroll, who had accused him of sexual assault and defamation.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in 2025, upheld the Manhattan jury’s January 2024 verdict ordering Mr Trump to pay Ms Carroll $83.3 million in damages.

However, in a filing on Tuesday, Mr Trump’s lawyers argued that he was immune from being sued over actions taken while in office and faulted the appeals court’s ruling, saying it failed to determine whether his remarks were protected by presidential immunity.

They contended that the appellate court’s decision“wrongly eviscerates presidential immunity, affording it less protection than legislative immunity for members of Congress and sovereign immunity for states.”

“This is the first case in our nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a president for his conduct in office,” the lawyers said.

“If left standing, the decision below will cause significant damage, not only to this president and future presidents, but also to the nation that the presidency was designed to serve.”

They further argued that Supreme Court review was warranted because the president had been ordered to pay nearly $100 million in damages for statements made in the White House while “defending against attacks on his fitness for office.”

The case stemmed from Ms Carroll’s lawsuit accusing Mr Trump of raping her in a department store in New York in the 1990s. She filed the suit in November 2019 during Mr Trump’s first term.

She accused Mr Trump of insulting and defaming her by asserting that she was a liar who “was trying to sell a new book” that “should be sold in the fiction section.” She was awarded $83.3 million in damages.

Mr Trump appealed the verdict, but the appellate court found “ample evidence that Trump was recklessly indifferent to Carroll’s health and safety” and that Ms Carroll was subjected to “harassment” following his statements.

The latest appeal comes weeks after the Supreme Court declined to review Mr Trump’s appeal against a separate 2023 $5 million judgment that found him to have sexually abused Ms Carroll.

In a separate case in 2024, a jury awarded her an additional $83.3 million for defamatory statements Mr Trump made in 2019 after she accused him of rape.

“Absent this court’s intervention, the sitting president is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office,” federal attorneys wrote. “That alone deserves this court’s attention.”