The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s appeal of a roughly $1.4 billion defamation judgment he owes for falsely claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.
The brief order ends Jones’s bid to stave off the staggering sum, which has plunged him into bankruptcy and could force him to give up airing his Infowars show.
Jones’s Supreme Court petition called it “financial death penalty by fiat.” He said his statements were “lifted out of context” and the judge didn’t give enough weight to his First Amendment arguments.
“Alex Jones is a media defendant entitled to all First Amendment freedom of the press protections,” the petition reads.
The justices did not appear to give it much consideration, as they did not request the families respond to Jones’s petition.
“The Supreme Court properly rejected Jones’s latest desperate attempt to avoid accountability for the harm he has caused. We look forward to enforcing the jury’s historic verdict and making Jones and Infowars pay for what they have done,” Chris Mattei, an attorney representing the families, said in a statement.
It keeps intact one of the largest defamation judgments in U.S. history, though it’s unclear how much the families will recover of the roughly $1.4 billion award.
Jones remains in bankruptcy, and the families have moved in recent weeks to sell assets owned by his company, Free Speech Systems. A judge recently confirmed those assets aren’t part of the bankruptcy estate and the families can pursue claims in state court.
The families have recently convinced a Texas state judge to appoint a receiver, though Jones is appealing the order.
He has warned that Infowars could be sold off to The Onion, a satirical news site. Last year, The Onion entered the winning bid in an auction to take control of Infowars, but it was blocked by the bankruptcy judge.
“The Plaintiffs here are on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum and do not want money for their judgment,” Jones’s lawyers wrote to the justices. “Their initial motivations were to get Jones’s message off the air. But after entry of the devastating, record breaking $1,436,650,000 judgment, that motivation morphed to something more sinister.”
