Meta has been ordered to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found that Facebook misled people about data privacy and its handling of harmful content. The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and produced a finding of nearly 44 million violations of state consumer-protection law.
Judge Francis Mathew set the penalty on October 21, following the jury's September 25 verdict. State Attorney General Raúl Torrez has said the money awarded will go into a fund for New Mexico's education system.
The state sued Meta in 2021 after revelations that Cambridge Analytica had obtained personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app, according to Reuters. The political consulting firm's clients included Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. New Mexico's case went beyond the data collection itself to challenge what Facebook told people about privacy, third-party access and its own safeguards.
How the violations added up
The state's original announcement puts the jury's count at 43,899,725 violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act. The findings covered assurances about users' control of personal information, advertisers' access to data, content moderation and Facebook's investigation of apps after Cambridge Analytica.
The total reflects violations attached to different misleading statements and the number of Facebook users or New Mexico residents in their audiences. That approach to counting is now central to Meta's challenge to the verdict.
One statement considered by jurors came from Mark Zuckerberg on May 24, 2010. The state-published jury form records these assurances:
"We do not give advertisers access to your personal information. We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone."
The jurors marked the statement as an unfair or deceptive practice and found that Facebook acted willfully. State law allows civil penalties of up to $5,000 for each willful violation.
New Mexico's lawyers had asked for $35 billion to $40 billion. Meta urged the judge to cap the penalty at $3.45 billion, arguing that a larger award would raise constitutional due-process concerns and risk driving businesses out of the state.
Meta disputes the evidence and the calculation
The company says it does not sell user data. Its lawyers have also challenged applying New Mexico's consumer-protection law to people who were not using Facebook, arguing that the state counted potential audiences without establishing that individuals actually encountered the statements.
At an October 1 hearing, Meta attorney Matt Nicholson said, according to the Associated Press:
"The jury didn’t make findings that any New Mexican heard or saw these statements, or was harmed by them."
The company plans to appeal the jury's verdict, AP reported, and interest on the penalty would accrue during an appeal. A successful challenge could reduce the violation count and the resulting financial penalty.
The findings also reach into what Facebook promised to do when something went wrong. According to the state's September announcement, jurors found willfully deceptive statements about conducting forensic audits of apps, banning developers who misused data and notifying people whose information may have been affected. They also rejected assurances that Facebook's Community Standards had no exceptions for politicians or newsworthiness. Those promises about enforcement helped make this a much broader case than the original data collection scandal.
Another major ruling before earnings
This privacy case is separate from New Mexico's child-safety lawsuit against Meta. In that proceeding, a jury imposed $375 million in civil penalties, and a judge later ordered a further $567 million for a youth mental-health fund, alongside changes to protections for young users. The state announced that combined $942 million outcome in August.
The new privacy penalty arrives on Meta's earnings day. The company is scheduled to release third-quarter financial results after the October 21 closing bell, with its conference call set for 20:30 UTC.