The US Supreme Court has rejected a request from right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to overturn the nearly $1.5bn (£1.1bn) defamation judgment against him.
Jones was ordered to make the payout in 2022 for claiming the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School – which killed 20 schoolchildren and six educators – was a hoax.
In order to make that payout, Jones was being forced to sell his Infowars media company to the satirical news site The Onion. He told the highest US court the sale would cause irreparable harm to him and his audience of 30 million.
Jones has not yet paid any of the damages he owes Sandy Hook families.
The Supreme Court did not explain its decision to deny his request.
Jones’s lawyers had made a free speech argument – that he should have the same protections under the First Amendment of the Constitution that journalists have. And Jones argued the financial consequences were too steep.
“The result is a financial death penalty by fiat imposed on a media defendant whose broadcasts reach millions,” he told the Supreme Court in the appeal.
While The Onion’s attempt to buy Infowars was rejected by a bankruptcy judge last year, Infowars could soon be up for sale again, giving The Onion another chance.
Legal pressure against Jones has been mounting since he was found liable by two juries for defamation and emotional distress over his lies about the Sandy Hook school shooting.
After the first verdict in Connecticut, Jones filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas, and Infowars was put up for auction to pay the Sandy Hook families, who had sued to collect on the judgment.
It was during Texas court proceedings that Jones acknowledged the attack was “100% real”. He had previously claimed the massacre was “staged” as part of a government plot to take guns from Americans and that “no-one died”.