The D.C Court of Appeals sat en banc Tuesday to consider a certified question about the scope of former President Donald Trump’s employment in a defamation lawsuit filed by the author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in September sent the question to the highest local court in D.C. after ruling, in a divided opinion, that D.C’s respondeat superior law governed the question of whether Trump was acting within the scope of his employment as president when he told reporters that he did not know Carroll and that her allegation was false.