Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. Supreme Court justices were back on the bench holding hearings this week, most prominently in the appeal over bans on transgender women and girls in sports. They also issued three rulings, including one that could open “the floodgates” to election lawsuits, according to the dissent. But despite another day of anticipation, the tariffs ruling wasn’t in the latest batch of opinions.
While Donald Trump’s administration argued in the name of defending women in sports, litigation over his civil liability for sexual abuse unfolded behind the scenes. He’s trying to reverse the $5 million in damages awarded by a New York City jury that found he abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll. Her lawyers filed their opposition brief to the justices on Wednesday, urging the high court to stay out of it.
To understand the arguments Trump and Carroll are making, here’s a quick refresher on how the justices decide which cases to take up. They receive thousands of petitions annually and have been granting review in fewer than 60 cases a term. Generally speaking, they’re looking for legal issues that raise important questions and have divided the country’s lower courts — creating “circuit splits” — and thus can benefit from a nationwide resolution.
That’s why Trump’s petition argued that his appeal presents an “important question of federal law” that implicates circuit splits. The gist of his claim is that the trial judge wrongly admitted evidence against him, including the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. He argues that the approval of the tape’s admission by the 2nd Circuit conflicted with the way that other federal appeals courts handle evidentiary issues.
Carroll unsurprisingly contests Trump’s framing of the case, both factually and legally. Factually, her lawyers wrote that the president’s “entire petition” is based on the “misstatement of fact” that she falsely accused him of sexual assault; they went on to detail what the jury found that Trump did to her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996. Legally, among their opposition arguments is that there’s no “genuine circuit split” and that his lawyers failed to challenge the 2nd Circuit’s ruling that he didn’t show how any error affected his “substantial rights.” They called the latter failure a “fatal defect” for his petition.
We don’t know yet what the court will do. Trump’s lawyers can file a reply brief making a final pitch to the justices, who will then decide whether to grant review. It takes four justices to do so.
Next week, guns and Federal Reserve independence are on the court’s calendar, with hearings on those topics scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. The latter hearing is over Trump’s bid to fire Lisa Cook from the Fed’s Board of Governors. As I wrote this week, news of the Trump Justice Department’s apparently bogus investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell isn’t likely to help the administration, because the court has already signaled its desire to protect the central bank’s independence — at least to a greater degree than the justices are protecting other federal agencies. They didn’t need a reminder of how much that Fed independence is needed, but the administration just gave them one.
The court also flagged Tuesday as the next day it will release at least one more opinion in a case argued this term. So, we’ll be back on watch that morning for the tariffs ruling, or whatever else might come.
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