Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to suspend $1.4 billion in damages. A judge ordered him to pay some of the families who lost children in a 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
The families received the money after suing Mr Jones for defamation. For years, on his show and on his Infowars website, Mr. Jones falsely claimed that the shooting was a hoax and that the victims’ family members were actors in a plot to enact extreme gun control legislation. Twenty children, all in first grade, and six educators died in the shooting.
The request to judges is the latest development in long-running litigation, as Mr Jones seeks to defer any payments to the families. Mr. Jones and his company Free Speech Systems separately asked the Supreme Court to review his appeal in the case. At their closed-door conference Friday, the justices will consider whether to take up the case.
Mr. Jones’s lawyers told the justices that he should receive special First Amendment considerations because of his large audience of viewers and listeners.
“If this case is not overturned, all journalists will realize that they could be held liable for enormous defamation convictions, particularly in ideologically divergent geographic regions, as Jones was, and will therefore refrain from publishing for fear of being taken to court there and facing ‘trial by sanction,'” his lawyers told the court in their Thursday filing.
During the Connecticut defamation trial, the families showed that Mr. Jones ignored requests to stop spreading falsehoods about the Sandy Hook shooting because it increased Infowars’ sales. Witnesses told stories of harassment from conspiracy theorists who believed Mr. Jones’ lies, including death and rape threats.
The Sandy Hook families won damages in the Connecticut case in late 2022 and in another defamation lawsuit in Texas earlier that year. Mr. Jones and his company declared bankruptcy shortly afterward, and the families have still not received any of the money awarded to them.
