A Texas judge on Tuesday denied Infowars host Alex Jones a bid to decrease the amount of damages he’s required to pay to the family of a victim of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting following a ruling in a defamation trial in August.
Travis County District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ruled Jones must pay, in full, the $49.2 million to plaintiffs Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, who lost their son in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.
The news was confirmed to The Hill by Mark Bankston, the attorney for Lewis and Heslin, who said his clients were “pleased with the judgement and will continue to ensure Mr. Jones is held accountable for the most appalling acts of defamation and harassment in American history.”
Jones had contested the $4.5 million in compensatory and $45.2 million in punitive damages awarded to the plaintiffs by a judge and jury.
In the appeals process, his attorneys argued that based on a 1995 Texas law, punitive damages are capped.
“There’s no question to me that this is a rare instance, I hope it remains a rare instance, where a defendant intentionally inflicted emotional damage in a manner so unusual that the victims had no other recourse,” Gamble said, according to a report from CNN.
An attorney for Jones told Reuters they would appeal Gamble’s Tuesday ruling after the judge rejected his arguments.
Jones was also ordered to pay around $1 billion this year in a separate trial in Connecticut to several other families of victims in the Sandy Hook shooting.
The Infowars host spread conspiracy theories about the shooting, claiming it was a hoax staged by the U.S. government to enact stricter gun control measures. He also claimed that the parents were “crisis actors.”
The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn., left 20 students and six staff members dead, one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.
Jones has acknowledged the massacre and apologized, but the Infowars host said in September that he was “done saying I’m sorry.”