New York Adult Survivors Act Creates Window for Carroll to Sue Trump for Battery

New York’s Adult Survivors Act (ASA), signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in May 2022, opened a one-year window beginning November 24, 2022, allowing victims of sexual assault to file civil lawsuits regardless of when the abuse occurred, effectively suspending statutes of limitations that would otherwise bar such claims. The legislation, sponsored by State Senator Brad Hoylman and Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, passed the New York State Senate unanimously in April 2022 and cleared the Assembly with a 140-3 vote in May 2022 before Governor Hochul signed it into law. The ASA was modeled after New York’s Child Victims Act, which had created a similar lookback window for childhood sexual abuse survivors and resulted in thousands of lawsuits against institutions like the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and public schools. The Adult Survivors Act extended this principle to adult victims, recognizing that trauma, shame, fear of retaliation, and power imbalances often prevent survivors from coming forward within traditional statute of limitations periods, which in New York required civil sexual assault claims to be filed within three years of the incident.

The law created a historic opportunity for survivors whose claims had been time-barred, with advocates estimating that thousands of cases would be filed during the one-year window. The legislation specifically targeted institutions and powerful individuals who had escaped accountability due to the passage of time, including cases involving workplace sexual harassment and assault, abuse in educational settings, and assaults by public figures. The ASA applied to all sexual offenses committed against adults, including rape, criminal sexual acts, and sexual abuse, regardless of whether the perpetrator had been criminally prosecuted. Significantly, the law allowed victims to sue not only individual perpetrators but also institutions that enabled or covered up abuse, creating potential liability for employers, organizations, and entities that facilitated sexual misconduct through negligent supervision or deliberate indifference.

Carroll’s Battery Lawsuit Filed

On November 24, 2022—the first day the Adult Survivors Act’s lookback window opened—E. Jean Carroll filed a federal lawsuit against Donald Trump in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging battery and defamation. This was Carroll’s second lawsuit against Trump but the first that could directly seek damages for the alleged sexual assault itself, which she claimed occurred in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in either 1995 or 1996. Carroll’s first lawsuit, filed in November 2019, had only alleged defamation based on Trump’s denials and disparaging comments about her allegation, because the statute of limitations for battery claims had long expired. The Adult Survivors Act now allowed Carroll to pursue the underlying sexual assault claim that had been legally time-barred for over two decades.

The new lawsuit sought compensatory and punitive damages for both the alleged assault and Trump’s continued defamatory statements about Carroll. The complaint detailed Trump’s alleged forcible penetration and the lasting psychological harm Carroll suffered, including trauma, fear, and damage to her career and reputation. Carroll’s legal team argued that Trump’s pattern of categorical denials and personal attacks—including his “she’s not my type” comment and repeated assertions that Carroll was lying for book sales—constituted ongoing defamation that further damaged her professionally and personally. The filing on the very first day of the ASA window signaled Carroll’s determination to hold Trump accountable and demonstrated the significance of the new law in enabling survivors to pursue justice regardless of how much time had passed since the assault.

Significance

The Adult Survivors Act represented a major shift in how New York law treated sexual assault claims, acknowledging the complex psychological and social barriers that prevent survivors from reporting abuse within traditional limitation periods. The law recognized that survivors often require years or decades to process trauma, overcome shame, achieve economic independence from abusers, or find the courage to come forward in the face of anticipated retaliation and disbelief. By creating the lookback window, New York joined a growing number of states that have reformed or eliminated statutes of limitations for sexual assault in recognition of trauma science and survivor advocacy.

For Carroll specifically, the ASA was transformative because it converted what had been only a defamation case into a comprehensive legal challenge that could directly address the alleged assault. Prior to the ASA, Carroll could only sue Trump for calling her a liar; now she could seek damages for the sexual violence itself. This fundamentally changed the nature of the litigation and the evidence that would be presented at trial. Instead of focusing solely on whether Trump’s denials were defamatory, the case would now require a jury to evaluate whether Trump had actually sexually assaulted Carroll in the 1990s—a far more serious finding with profound implications for Trump’s reputation and potential criminal exposure.

The ASA enabled what would become one of the most high-profile applications of lookback window legislation in American history. Carroll’s case would ultimately result in jury findings that Trump sexually abused her and defamed her, with damages totaling over $88 million across two trials. The verdict would make Trump the first former U.S. president to be found civilly liable for sexual abuse, and federal judges would explicitly state that the jury’s findings meant Trump had raped Carroll under common definitions of the term. The ASA’s one-year window would ultimately enable over 3,000 lawsuits to be filed before it closed on November 24, 2023, representing one of the most significant expansions of survivor rights in New York legal history. The law demonstrated how legislative action could provide pathways to justice that had been foreclosed by outdated statutes of limitations, and Carroll’s successful prosecution of her claims validated the law’s underlying premise: that survivors deserve the opportunity to seek accountability regardless of how much time has passed since the abuse occurred.