Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones’s bid to set aside $1.4 billion verdict
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid by conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder Alex Jones to set aside the historic $1.4 billion jury verdict against him for defaming families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary mass killing.
Jones had asked the justices to pause the award and take up an appeal of the civil case against him, saying it was the only way to forestall a possible sale of Infowars to the satirical news site the Onion. The sale is designed to raise money for restitution for Sandy Hook families.
Jones was found liable in Connecticut state court and in a separate suit in Texas for falsely claiming that the 2012 shooting that left 20 students and six adults dead was a hoax carried out to confiscate guns and create momentum for gun-control regulations.
Jones falsely accused family members of victims of being “crisis actors.” The baseless claim led to years of harassment against the families of Sandy Hook victims by Jones’s followers and other conspiracy theorists.
Attorneys for Jones wrote in filings with the high court that a potential sale of Infowars to the Onion would “confuse Jones’s listeners and ultimately destroy Jones’s very message” because the Onion had floated the idea of using the site to publish satirical commentary.
“It would have been as if the KKK levied on a judgment against the NAACP or a group of atheists took over a church or synagogue—ideologically polar opposites—and began to use the opposition entity for its own ideological purposes,” the attorneys wrote.
The Onion had previously attempted to buy Infowars, but the move was blocked by a bankruptcy court. Jones and his company have filed for bankruptcy in Texas.
Jones has no hope of paying the full $1.4 billion verdict against him, his attorneys wrote in their filing with the high court. They said Infowars has about 30 million daily listeners and viewers.
The families of Sandy Hook victims did not file a reply to Jones’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
The justices also declined on Tuesday to take up other cases.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a brief statement about the court’s decision not to hear a case in which parents allege that school officials infringe on their right to “direct the upbringing of their children” by blocking them from discussions about the children’s gender identities.
In a statement joined by Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, Alito wrote that he agreed with declining the case but said he was concerned federal courts were avoiding vexing constitutional questions about parental rights.
The justices also declined to hear a case involving a part of the Communications Decency Act known as Section 230 that protects online services from liability for what their users post. They turned down another case that questioned the constitutionality of the federal ban on letting habitual drug users possess guns.
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