Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use his personal bankruptcy to escape paying at least $US1.1 billion ($1.7 billion) in defamation damages stemming from his repeated lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook primary school massacre, a US bankruptcy judge has ruled.

Bankruptcy can be used to wipe out debts and legal judgments, but not if they result from “willful or malicious injury” caused by the debtor, according to a decision by US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston, Texas, on Thursday.

Courts in Connecticut and Texas have already ruled Jones intentionally defamed relatives of school children killed in the mass shooting, and they have ordered Jones to pay $US1.5 billion ($A2.4 billion) in damages.

Lopez ruled more than $US1.1 billion of those verdicts, awarded for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, cannot be wiped away in bankruptcy.

But he ruled other parts of the verdicts, including $US324 million ($A512 million) in lawyers’ fees awarded as punitive damages in the Connecticut case, could possibly be discharged.

Lopez said he would hold a trial to sort out the precise amount of the damages that could be discharged.

Lawyers for Jones and the Sandy Hook families did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jones’ lawyers had argued he had not lied and his conduct was not malicious, saying in court papers Jones “never said something on air that he did not believe to be true”.

Jones claimed for years that the 2012 killing of 20 students and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was staged with actors as part of a government plot to seize Americans’ guns.

He has since acknowledged the shooting occurred, but plaintiffs said Jones cashed in for years off his lies about the massacre.

Jones and his media company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy protection in December and July last year, respectively.

Jones could face two more defamation trials for plaintiffs who have not yet received a final judgment in their cases.

Lopez ruled on Thursday that Jones could not escape the damages to be awarded in one of those cases because Jones has already been found liable for defaming Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose six-year-old son Noah was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.

Jones falsely said Veronique De La Rosa was an actor who “faked” a CNN interview about her son’s death.