Supreme Court Denies Alex Jones Appeal of $1.4 Billion Sandy Hook Judgment

The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down an appeal by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of the $1.4 billion judgment against him for his false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting that took the lives of 20 first graders and six teachers.

The $1.4 billion award was won by the Connecticut families of the victims of the shooting in their defamation lawsuit against Jones.

On his popular right-wing Infowars platform, Jones for several years falsely claimed that the massacre was a hoax and that Sandy Hook family members were actors in a plot to promote gun control legislation.

During court proceedings in Connecticut, family members of students killed at the school maintained that Jones ignored their repeated requests to stop his false claims on his broadcasts. They complained they were harassed and threatened by his followers. They claimed that he intentionally kept up his Sandy Hook hoax story because it was good for Infowars’ business of attracting listeners and selling vitamin supplements.

In the damages portion of the trial, the six-person jury awarded the 15 plaintiffs a total of $965,000,000 in compensatory damages, to which the trial court added $471,650,000 in penalties for unfair trade practices and punitive damages, amounting to approximately $95,776,667 per plaintiff.

Jones has maintained that his statements were protected by the First Amendment, that he was being punished for the actions of people who said they were his listeners, and that the $1.4 billion “death penalty sanction” is too big to be paid and never should have been imposed.

“As a conservative media figure, Jones’s opinions— and those expressed by some of his guests—focused largely on exposing what he believed were efforts by the mainstream media and the Obama Administration to convert the tragedy into a mass theatrical production in service of anti-gun legislation,” his lawyers wrote in asking the Supreme Court to delay any payment by Jones and his company Free Speech Systems until it had ruled on his appeal.

His lawyers also argued that Sandy Hook lawyers had repeatedly referenced only selected portions of his broadcasts, omitting clarifying language.

Jones and his company have been able to delay paying any part of the judgment by filing for bankruptcy.

As is customary when denying certiorari in a case, the Supreme Court justices offered no comment or reason for their denial.