WASHINGTON — President Trump’s lawyers made a bold argument in a court filing last week. They said he was too busy and important to respond to lawsuits in state courts over his private conduct so long as he remained in office.

They cited a surprising precedent to support their argument: Clinton v. Jones, the 1997 Supreme Court decision that allowed a sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton to move forward in federal court while he was in office.

It is true that the decision has not aged well, but at first blush it seems to undercut rather than support Mr. Trump’s position. The ruling, after all, rejected Mr. Clinton’s argument that making him respond to a suit from Paula Jones would be a burdensome distraction of constitutional dimensions. (Ms. Jones said Mr. Clinton had made lewd advances in an Arkansas hotel room when he was governor of the state.)

The decision is best remembered for a spectacularly wrong prediction in Justice John Paul Stevens’s majority opinion. Ms. Jones’s case, Justice Stevens wrote, “appears to us highly unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of petitioner’s time.” In fact, it led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment.