Judge calls Trump’s attempt to dismiss E Jean Carroll rape lawsuit ‘absurd’

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A judge on Friday rejected as “absurd” Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit from the writer E Jean Carroll, who alleges he raped her in a department store changing room in New York in the mid-1990s.

Carroll has sued Trump for defamation, for remarks while denying her allegation including that she was not his “type”.

But the lawsuit which the New York judge, Lewis Kaplan, refused to dismiss on Friday was brought against the former president under the Adult Survivors Act, a new state law which gives adults a one-year window to sue alleged attackers even if statutes of limitations have expired.

In his ruling in Manhattan, Kaplan said there was no merit to Trump’s argument that Carroll’s claim must be dismissed because the law denied him due process under the state constitution.

The judge also said state law did not require Carroll, a former Elle columnist, to prove she suffered an economic loss from Trump’s comments, as Trump had argued.

Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, said “we are disappointed with the court’s decision” and planned an immediate appeal.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said “we are pleased though not surprised”.

Carroll accuses Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996.

She first sued after Trump denied the accusation in June 2019, telling a reporter at the White House he did not know Carroll, who was “not my type”, and that she concocted the claim to sell a memoir.

The second lawsuit arose from an October 2022 social media post in which Trump called the rape claim a “hoax”, “lie”, “con job” and “complete scam”, and said “this can only happen to ‘Trump’!”

That lawsuit included a battery claim under the Adult Survivors Act.

Kaplan said Trump was “demonstrably incorrect” to claim the law was unconstitutional because lawmakers did not sufficiently explain why it was needed.

The judge said lawmakers passed the law to help sexual abuse victims who might have suppressed memories of their attacks, or like Carroll were deterred from suing out of fear.

“To suggest that the ASA violates the state due process clause because the legislature supposedly did not describe that injustice to the defendant’s entire satisfaction in a particular paragraph of a particular type of legislative document – itself a dubious premise – is absurd,” Kaplan wrote.

Trump is seeking another White House term in 2024.

He and Carroll are awaiting a decision from a Washington DC appeals court on whether, under local law, Trump should be immune from Carroll’s first lawsuit.

That suit would probably be dismissed if the court decided Trump spoke within his role as president, but continue if Trump spoke in his personal capacity, as Carroll argued.

Any decision would have no effect on Carroll’s second lawsuit. A trial in the first lawsuit is scheduled for 10 April.