The Supreme Court is already set to hear several important appeals in the new term that starts next month: on tariffs, voting rights, campaign finance, transgender athletes and more. Alex Jones wants to add another explosive appeal to the docket.
The Infowars host wants the justices to upend the $1.4 billion judgment that his Supreme Court petition called “the largest in American libel history.” He was sued by victims’ relatives over his lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School murders.
In his petition, Jones said that the resulting 10-figure sum “can never be paid” and that the litigation outcome is “a financial death penalty by fiat.” He said he couldn’t fairly defend himself, complaining that the Connecticut legal process lacked “meaningful appellate review” and featured “a punitive administrative Death Penalty Sanction for small discovery errors to impose liability, bypass burdens of proof, and award punitive damages.”
Jones argues that his First Amendment rights were given short shrift and that his statements were taken out of context. He said he had expressed “opinions of media excesses” when he used terms such as “hoax” and “staged,” which he said were “generally directed at the media circus, while often in the same broadcasts acknowledging that murders had in fact occurred.”
The plaintiffs can file a brief opposing Supreme Court review, which is currently due Oct. 9. Jones can file a final reply brief after the opposition brief is filed, after which the justices will consider whether to grant review. It takes four justices to agree to do so, and they reject most petitions. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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