Supreme Court declines to hear Alex Jones appeal leaves 1.4B judgment

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up Alex Jones's final appeal, leaving in place a roughly $1.4 billion judgment against the Infowars host for false statements that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax. The denial was issued without comment and without requesting a response from the families who sued, court records show.

The judgment stems from lawsuits by relatives of victims and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 first graders and six school staff were killed. A Connecticut judge entered a default ruling against Jones and his company in late 2021 after finding they had repeatedly failed to comply with court orders and discovery requests. A jury in 2022 awarded $964 million in compensatory damages, and the judge later added about $473 million in punitive damages, producing the total now left intact by the high court.

Jones had argued that the default judgment and the size of the award violated his constitutional rights to free speech and due process. His attorneys said the statements at issue were opinions about media coverage and that the sanctions imposed for discovery violations improperly...