The ruling of the Second United States Appeals Circuit that President Trump cannot replace himself with the Department of Justice in the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll is a setback in the president’s efforts to rid himself of the $83 million defamation judgment awarded to the sexual advice columnist. 

The decision to lock in Mr. Trump as the defendant was handed down by the Second Circuit in June, but the appellate court has only now deigned to disclose its reasoning. The three judges on the panel who decided the appeal — Denny Chin, Sarah Merriam, and Maria Araújo Kahn — were all appointed by either President Obama or Biden. 

In June 2019, Ms. Carroll, now 81, appeared on the cover of New York magazine and accused Mr. Trump of raping her in a dressing room on the lingerie floor of an upscale Manhattan department store, Bergdorf Goodman, sometime in the 1990s. From the White House, Mr. Trump denied her accusations, famously said she was not his “type,” and called her a con artist. 

Ultimately, Manhattan juries found Mr. Trump not liable for rape but awarded Ms. Caroll $5 million for suffering “sexual abuse” and defamation and another $83 million for being further defamed when Mr. Trump denied her claim. He has no plans to pay her a cent. Mr. Trump has lost his appeal — at the Second Circuit — of the original $5 million verdict. 

The 47th president has also appealed the second $83 million judgment to the Second Circuit. A ruling has not come down on that judgment after oral arguments were heard in June. Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued in court that the verdict  “severely damages the presidency.” They have invoked presidential immunity to vacate or reduce the judgment. Both verdicts could be assessed by the Supreme Court.

Mr. Trump’s latest efforts to slide off the case were predicated on the Westfall Act, a federal statute that, as the Second Circuit explains, “permits the United States, in certain circumstances, to be substituted as a party in a lawsuit against a federal employee alleging that the employee committed tortious conduct in the course of his employment.” Mr. Trump, though, invoked the Westfall Act only on appeal — after he retook the White House. 

The Second Circuit explains that Mr. Trump waited too long to make his claim under the Westfall Act, making his petition “untimely.” If Mr. Trump had succeeded, the appellate court admits, “failure” would have lay in store for Ms. Carroll’s case. That is because if the Department of Justice succeeded Mr. Trump as defendant, the case would have been governed by the Federal Torts Claims Act, which “expressly does not waive the sovereign immunity of the United States for the tort of defamation.”

The Second Circuit explains that “after several years of litigation, at substantial cost to all parties, and a significant victory for Carroll, it is simply too late to bring this motion. Fairness and equity dictate that the motion to substitute be denied.” The appellate court adds that “the practical impact of permitting the … untimely motion to substitute would be to unwind those five years of litigation and a duly-rendered jury verdict, and, potentially, to deprive Carroll of any opportunity to pursue her claims.” 

This appeal had made its way up to the Second Circuit from the courtroom of Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw both of Ms. Carroll’s cases against Mr. Trump. The president has called Judge Kaplan “a totally biased and hostile person” and “a nasty man,” among other imprecations.  

When a jury awarded her $5 million in damages, it notably declined to find that Mr. Trump raped Ms. Carroll — instead determining that he “sexually abused her” — in what Judge Kaplan called the “narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.” Ms. Carroll’s account of the incident in the dressing room was conveyed to the jury in graphic and violent detail, so why the jurors concluded it was an act of sexual abuse rather than rape is unclear.

Also in June Ms. Carroll released a book, “Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President,” about her experience locking legal horns with Mr. Trump. The book debuted at no. 2 on the Times’s nonfiction bestseller list. Ms. Carroll wrote a sex and romance advice column for Elle between 1993 and 2019.