A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the jury hearing the second defamation suit against President Trump brought by writer E. Jean Carroll would only need to decide how much Mr. Trump owed Ms. Carroll in damages. Mr. Trump, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled, is liable for damages in the case, just as he was in the last one.

Indeed, earlier this year, Mr. Trump was found liable for the defamation relating to Mr. Trump’s denial of sexual assault allegations that Ms. Carroll brought against Mr. Trump.

In May, Mr. Trump was found to have sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll at a luxury New York department store in the 1990s and to have defamed her when, in 2019, he accused her of lying and said that she wasn’t his “type.” In the ruling after the May trial, Ms. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages, which Mr. Trump has yet to pay.

In the latest ruling, Judge Kaplan said that the new claims against Mr. Trump are “substantially the same” as those that Ms. Carroll brought against Mr. Trump in 2022. For that reason, Judge Kaplan ruled, all that the jury must decide in January is how much Mr. Trump should pay Ms. Carroll.

“The truth or falsity of Mr. Trump’s 2019 statements therefore depends — like the truth or falsity of his 2022 statement — on whether Ms. Carroll lied about Mr. Trump sexually assaulting her,” Judge Kaplan wrote. “The jury’s finding that she did not therefore is binding in this case and precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements.”

The upcoming trial is currently slated for January 2024. Ms. Carroll is seeking more than $10 million in damages. The judge also denied a request from Mr. Trump’s legal team to cap any damages owed to Ms. Carrol because of the earlier verdict.

The case being heard in January is focused on comments made by Mr. Trump in 2019 when Ms. Carroll first went public with her claims against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump and his attorneys have consistently denied Ms. Carroll’s claims despite the court’s findings, with an attorney for Mr. Trump, Alina Habba, saying, “We remain very confident that the Carroll II verdict will be overturned on appeal, which will render this decision moot.”

“We also anticipate that the Second Circuit will stay this trial as it considers the meritorious defenses that have been raised by President Trump,” Ms. Habba said in a statement.

While Mr. Trump has maintained his innocence publicly, he has also doubled down on the sort of defamatory behavior that he was found liable for in the first place.

Shortly after the first case was resolved, Mr. Trump appeared on a CNN town hall and said, “I have no idea who this woman is — this is a fake story, made up story” and called Ms. Carroll a “whack job.”

Mr. Trump also sought to minimize the jury’s decision, saying that the jury had ruled that “‘He didn’t rape her.’ And I didn’t do anything else either.”

Judge Kaplan later clarified his ruling, saying that Ms. Carroll’s failure “to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”