Judge Orders Meta to Pay New Mexico $25 Billion Over Privacy Claims
A New Mexico judge set a $25 billion penalty after jurors found Meta misled users about data privacy in a case rooted in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
A New Mexico state judge on Wednesday ordered Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to pay $25 billion in civil penalties, weeks after a jury found the company had misled residents about how it protected their personal data and policed content on its platform. The penalty, which the state’s lawyers had sought as part of a case tied to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, is one of the largest ever imposed on a company by a US state court.
The order was issued by Judge Francis Mathew of New Mexico’s state district court in Santa Fe, according to Reuters and ABC7 Los Angeles. Under state law, the money is to go to New Mexico’s public school system.
What the court decided
The ruling followed a jury verdict on September 25. Reuters reported that jurors reviewed 29 statements made by Meta and its leadership about privacy and content moderation and found 26 of them misleading. ABC7 described the jury as weighing 34 separate statements, so accounts of the exact number differ. Both outlets agreed that the jury found more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, the state’s main consumer protection law.
Those violations were counted by the number of Facebook users or New Mexico residents who were in the audience for each misleading statement. Because the law allows a penalty of up to $5,000 per violation, the theoretical maximum topped $219 billion. Reuters reported that Judge Mathew found the law supported a penalty above that level but chose to reduce it. He wrote that the company’s conduct “goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices.”
The jury did not side with the state on every point. According to ABC7, jurors found New Mexico had not proven that Meta made false claims about removing harmful content, including COVID-19 misinformation.
The arguments on each side
At an October 1 hearing, Randi McGinn, a lawyer representing the state, asked the judge to impose between $35 billion and $40 billion. Reuters quoted her telling the court that it “should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money.”
Meta urged a far smaller figure. In court filings, the company asked the judge to cap the penalty at $3.45 billion and warned that a larger sum could scare businesses away from the state. It argued that it does not sell user data and that New Mexico had not shown any consumer was actually misled. Matt Nicholson, a lawyer for Meta, told the court that a $40 billion award would be “shocking to the conscience,” ABC7 reported, and argued that the jury made no finding that any New Mexican saw or was harmed by the statements in question.
Meta also told the court it has updated its policies since the lawsuit was filed. ABC7 reported that the company plans to appeal, while Reuters said a Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Background: Cambridge Analytica and New Mexico’s lawsuits
Raúl Torrez, New Mexico’s attorney general, brought the case in 2021. It grew out of revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, had obtained data on as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party personality quiz app. The state alleged that Meta misled users about who could access their information and tolerated hate speech and misinformation when it benefited the company financially. Meta has disputed those claims.
New Mexico pursued the case on its own after most other states resolved their Cambridge Analytica claims against the company through settlements, according to ABC7.
It is the state’s second major courtroom win against Meta this year. Reuters noted that:
- In March, a Santa Fe jury found Meta misled users about the safety of young people on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and ordered $375 million in civil penalties.
- In a later phase of that case, a judge directed Meta to pay $567 million into a state fund for teen mental health and to adopt new protections for teenage users in New Mexico.
What comes next
An appeal could take considerable time, and ABC7 reported that interest on the penalty would accrue while it proceeds. An appellate court could also revisit how the violations were counted, which could lower the final total. Separately, the state is seeking a court order to stop the practices the jury found misleading.
For now, the ruling hands New Mexico a judgment that dwarfs many past privacy penalties against technology companies and adds to growing pressure from state attorneys general over how social media platforms handle user data.
