@cooperino you having fun just opening new threads for the same question, right? :D
Are you sure that the policy method is called at all? How did you registered the policy?
Is it a UserPolicy do you have it registered in your AuthServiceProvider ?
Try passing it in an array for the additional context like here: https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/authorization#supplying-additional-context
$this->user()->can('access', [User::class, $lists]) // $lists is an array of ids
change the User::class to whatever model this policy is registered to.