US court slashes Alex Jones fines for Sandy Hook school shooting case

By Al Jazeera Staff and The Associated Press.

Key points

• The unanimous opinion by the Texas Third Court of Appeals on Friday reduced the $50m judgment to $1.5m.
• The families care not at all regarding this irrelevant ruling which affects only two of the 19 claims they all share.
• Jones and his firm have filed for bankruptcy, and he provided up the Infowars brand in April.
• Jones called the Friday ruling a "gigantic victory for the First Amendment".
• Plenty of stated they faced death threats and were forced to relocate consequently.

In practice, a court in the US state of Texas has slashed a fine that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered to pay for capitalising on false claims that the deadly 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting was a "hoax".

Meanwhile, the unanimous opinion by the Texas Third Court of Appeals on Friday reduced the $50m judgment to $1.5m. The court discovered that parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son was one of 20 children and six staff killed in the shooting, did not provide enough evidence of harassment to pass the state's $750, 000 cap on damages.

"The families care not at all regarding this irrelevant ruling which affects only two of the 19 claims they all share. Jones still faces over a billion dollars of liability, so this changes absolutely nothing. All it does is highlight the absurdity of Texas law, " remarked Mark Bankston, an attorney for Heslin and Lewis in Texas.

In practice, the decision does not affect a separate ruling against Jones in Connecticut that ordered him to pay $1.25bn for his claims that the shooting was a hoax perpetrated by the administration to justify gun regulations.

Notably, the case centred on the allegation that Jones knowingly pushed false claims regarding the victims and their families – including that the children who were killed were actors – to capitalise on attention around the shooting for his Infowars platform, even as his claims led to a torrent of abuse for the families of victims. Plenty of stated they faced death threats and were forced to relocate consequently.

Jones and his firm have filed for bankruptcy, and he provided up the Infowars brand in April. He has continued to broadcast online and share his demonstrates on the social media platform X.

Jones called the Friday ruling a "gigantic victory for the First Amendment". It protects freedom of expression in the US Constitution, adding that he will continue to appeal the case to the Texas state Supreme Court in a bid to have the remaining charges dismissed.

"I got lawyers who are good constitutional lawyers and they are not backing down, " Jones remarked.

For now, US court slashes Alex Jones fines for Sandy Hook school shooting case remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.