Alex Jones goes to the Supreme Court

Last week, conservative media personality Alex Jones filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to pause a lower-court judgment that would require him to pay more than $1.4 billion for making false claims about the 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

As the application noted, it was his second request for the Supreme Court’s help in a little over a month. On Sept. 5, Jones urged the court to hear his appeal of lower court proceedings, contending that he improperly was found liable for defamation and emotional distress experienced by the families of children killed at Sandy Hook.

The justices considered Jones’ petition for review during their private conference on Friday, Oct. 10, which means we could learn its fate as soon as Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. EDT, when the court will next release an order list.

Here’s a brief overview of how this case developed and why Jones believes it is worthy of Supreme Court review.

Who is Alex Jones?

Jones is a longtime talk show host who, over the course of his career, built a major media platform called InfoWars. Even before the Sandy Hook dispute, InfoWars was a source of conspiratorial claims about major world events, such as that the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 was staged or that the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 were an inside job.

Through InfoWars, Jones also sold a variety of products, such as dietary supplements, and “[m]uch of his revenue came from those sales,” according to the Associated Press.

Why did Alex Jones say about Sandy Hook?

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, which left 20 children and six adult staff members dead, Jones repeatedly criticized media coverage of the event and suggested that aspects of the shooting had been staged to promote support for new gun restrictions.

In April 2013, four months after the shooting, he called it a “government operation” with “inside job written all over it,” according to Reuters. In a wide-ranging 2017 interview with Megyn Kelly, Jones said he “tend[s] to believe that children probably did die there. But then you look at all the other evidence on the other side.”

What happened in the Sandy Hook lawsuits against Alex Jones?

Family members of Sandy Hook victims and an FBI agent who worked the scene sued Jones for defamation and emotional distress. They alleged, among other things, that he had fueled harassment against them by misrepresenting what happened during the shooting in his public commentary. Some of the lawsuits were filed in Connecticut, while others were filed in Texas, where Free Speech Systems, the parent company of InfoWars, is based, according to Reuters.

In both Connecticut and Texas, judges entered default judgments against Jones, finding him liable for defamation and emotional distress. Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Texas cited Jones’ “flagrant bad faith and callous disregard” for the judicial process to explain her decision. A Texas jury later awarded the parents involved in the lawsuit nearly $50 million in damages.

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis pointed to Jones’ “willful noncompliance” during the discovery process to justify her decision. She then convened a jury, which decided that Jones should pay nearly $1 billion in compensatory damages. Bellis later added more than $400 million in punitive damages to the judgment.

Did Alex Jones pay the families?

After the default judgments were announced, Jones and Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy protection. The Sandy Hook families became part of those proceedings, first to try to prevent the bankruptcy proceedings from stalling their preexisting cases and then to take part in negotiations over how Jones would pay them what he owed them.

In June 2024, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez ordered the liquidation of Jones’ personal assets, including his stake in InfoWars, according to Reuters. That decision led to a high-profile auction of InfoWars and a dispute between the bidders.

The Onion, a popular satirical news site that had the support of several Sandy Hook families, initially was declared the winner of the auction over First United American Companies, which, according to NBC News, is “a limited liability company that runs Jones’ online supplements store.” But Jones and FUAC sued to block The Onion’s purchase of InfoWars, contending that the auction wasn’t fair. After assessing their arguments, Lopez rejected the sale, explaining that the auction was flawed and that organizers should have worked to get a higher offer. Lopez’s decision made it possible for Jones to stay at InfoWars, at least for now.

Why is Alex Jones appealing to the Supreme Court?

Jones’ Sept. 5 appeal to the Supreme Court centers on the Connecticut judgment. He contends that the default judgment was improper because it presented an incomplete picture of his statements about Sandy Hook, it made too much of “trivial” discovery issues, and it undermined Supreme Court precedent on the First Amendment rights of media defendants, like him.

“Viewed in full context, Jones expressly affirmed that deaths occurred, while using the phrases ‘staged’ or ‘hoax’ to characterize media and governmental scripting. It is therefore contextually impossible to construe his remarks as denying deaths, as the Complaint did by selective editing. Precisely to guard against such distortions, this Court has required independent judicial review of the entire record in First Amendment cases,” the petition for review said.

Why is Alex Jones seeking emergency relief?

As noted above, just over a month after appealing to the Supreme Court, Jones filed a request for emergency relief. He urged the justices to pause collection of the $1.4 billion Connecticut judgment as they consider his appeal. He explained that, without the Supreme Court’s intervention, he will experience “irreparable injury,” because the Sandy Hook families soon will take control of InfoWars through foreclosure and turn it over to The Onion. He further contended that a stay is necessary to protect the public interest, because around 30 million people listen to or view InfoWars each day.

“Without a stay now, when this case is reviewed and later reversed, InfoWars will have been acquired by its ideological nemesis and destroyed — which Jones believes is the Plaintiffs’ intention. Hence, Jones will clearly experience irreparable injury if a stay is not granted,” the emergency application said.

Will the court hear Alex Jones’ case? 

In the application, Jones treats it almost as a foregone conclusion that the Supreme Court will take up his case. “While it is a perhaps reckless enterprise to tell the Supreme Court what it must do or predict how it will rule, one of the requirements of gaining a Stay in this First Amendment case requires Jones to predict if this Court will grant the Writ and hear this case. Jones, in turn, asserts this Court’s granting of the Writ appears to be mandatory because, according to this Court’s precedents, this Court is obligated to make its own independent evaluation of the entire record here which can only be done if the Writ is granted,” he wrote.

One sign that he may turn out to be wrong is that the Sandy Hook families did not file a brief opposing Jones’ request for review. In such a scenario, if at least one justice expresses interest in hearing from the other side, the court can direct the litigants to file a response. In this case, the court did not do so – even though the justices virtually never grant review of a case without calling for a response, as SCOTUSblog previously reported.