The first amendment has never been held to give immunity for libel or slander. So if you think it's a first amendment violation, you need to learn that the first amendment does not give blanket immunity for speech that harms others.
Suppose I decide to do some target shooting in my yard and set up a target. One of my shots misses and goes past the target and hits your house where it causes a surprising amount of damage and you sue me.
Would you say that if a court allows that and awards you damages it is a violation of my 2nd Amendment rights with more steps?
That's not really the reason. Even in a civil case, the first amendment certainly would apply to whatever laws allow the civil case to happen.
However, the first amendment is not absolute. Defamation is still a thing in the US. The first amendment creates a higher bar than many other countries (especially for public figures, but the victims in this case aren't public figures), but it is still possible.
How is a ruling in a civil court not a form of government prosecution? It would be more correct to say that your first amendment rights stop at defaming others.
The state enforces property rights too. Let's say someone won't let me build a place of worship on their land. Is that a "first amendment violation but with more steps"?
You could make any instance of "government upholds the law" into "constitutional violation" that way.
A ruling in a civil court is very obviously not a prosecution. Because prosecutors can't, by definition, make rulings.
Laws that force the government to violate the constitution are unconstitutional. So yes, a violation but with more steps.
A ruling in a civil court that is enforced by a government is the same thing as the government ruling it, but through transitive properties. It can't be not enforced and enforced at the same time (the argument that civil is somehow not judicial).
In reality we are just griping that our government is too pussy to amend the constitution, and we've already written laws that subvert it, and those are being upheld by a corrupt/politicized supreme court and bullshit case law.
If I were to bring a civil suit against you because the comment above offended my sensibilities, it would be quickly thrown out of court because it is your first amendment right to say anything you like, with certain exceptions that the government recognizes as limitations of this right.
Even though this is a civil matter, it is still a judgement on government law. This is not some contract dispute where the parties are simply seeking arbitration, with no government involvement except as a "service provider" for this arbitration.
Alex Jones will not have a criminal record as a result of this. He has not been declared as committing a crime.
He did take actions that, by civil law, created civil liabilities. He was sued over those liabilities. He failed to participate in the civil litigation process and lost badly as a result.
Civil and criminal law are not the same thing and your insistence otherwise doesn't change the reality.
Civil and criminal law are separate things, absolutely. But the first ammendment applies to both civil and criminal law - it is a limitation on the government's ability to create laws, not just a limitation on the government's ability to pursue criminal penalties.
Alex Jones is only liable because there exists a law that the government created that says that defamation is illegal. Since this is a law, it could have been in conflict with the first ammendment - and, in fact, there have been legal challenges on this very line that reached the SC. But the Supreme Court has found that this is an acceptable limitation on the first amendment rights, with the specific limitations.
But, for example, if the US government wanted to adopt the English law on defamation, it would not be constitutional in the USA, it would run foul of the first ammendment.
What happens if you don't pay your civil liabilities? Civil vs criminal is a silly distinction when it comes to discussing right suppression. Jail time is not the only way to suppress a right.
IANAL but I think of a civil suit as a substitute for the injured party extracting justice by less civilized methods. If you wreck my fence, I can come wreck your fence in retaliation. Or I can sue you. The government is only providing the venue for resolving the dispute.
Now in reality there are political and other influences on court behavior. But the government is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant.
This is only part of civil law. Civil law also governs numerous government regulations as well. If you're fined for illegal parking, that happens in a civil court too - but it's still a suit between you and the state. Even in your example of a destroyed fence, the reason you can bring such a suit in court is that there are state or federal laws that I broke by destroying your fence. If such laws didn't exist, a judge would not help you.
What you're thinking more of is contract law - where two parties go before a judge simply to adjudicate a matter that is entirely of their own invention. If we had signed a contract that said I can touch your fence but in touching it I left a hand print on it, I might think the contract allowed me to do so, while you may think that the hand print constitutes wrecking your fence, and we can go before a judge to decide and enforce said decision. The judge then won't look at any state/federal laws, they will look only at the terms of our contract (assuming the contract itself doesn't violate any laws, of course).
> The government is only providing the venue for resolving the dispute.
The government provides the venue, the decider, the rules of engagement, and enforces the decision. The government stands on the side of the plaintiff, ready to turn the resolution (that the government decided) into the same result as if it were law.