Meta Hit With Record $25 Billion Penalty in New Mexico Facebook Privacy Case as Tech Giant Vows to Fight Back

A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta Platforms to pay the state $25 billion after a jury found the company deceived Facebook users about how their personal data was protected. It is the largest financial penalty ever imposed on the social media giant.

State District Judge Francis Mathew issued the ruling Wednesday, roughly a month after jurors found Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's consumer protection laws. The penalty far exceeds the $5 billion fine the Federal Trade Commission levied against Facebook in 2019, which had been the company's largest regulatory penalty until now.

Meta said it would appeal.

"We are confident we will prevail on appeal," C.J. Mahoney, Meta's chief legal officer, said in a statement.

A ruling rooted in Cambridge Analytica

The case, brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and filed in 2021, centered on statements Meta and its leaders made about user privacy and content moderation on Facebook.

The lawsuit grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, one of the most damaging episodes in the company's history. A third-party personality quiz app collected data from roughly 87 million Facebook profiles, and that information was later sold to the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which used it to build targeted advertising. New Mexico argued that Facebook misled users about who could access their information and about the scope of the resulting breach.

In his ruling, Mathew sided firmly with the state's view of the company's conduct.

"Facebook promised users that they (the users) controlled their data. This was false," the judge wrote.

He also found that the misleading statements were not isolated. "These communications were part of a coherent strategy designed to mislead the public," Mathew wrote.

The state sued under New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act, alleging that Facebook misused personal information, misrepresented its data practices and failed to adequately deal with misinformation and hate speech on the platform.

What the jury decided

Jurors in September found that Meta violated state consumer protection law more than 43 million times, concluding that most of the company's challenged statements about privacy and content moderation were misleading.

The jury did not side with the state on every claim. Jurors found New Mexico had not proven that Meta made false claims about removing harmful content, including COVID-19 misinformation.

The size of the final penalty fell between the positions of the two sides. New Mexico had asked for between $35 billion and $40 billion, while Meta argued that any award should not exceed $3.4 billion.

During the penalty phase, Meta attorney Matt Nicholson argued that an award approaching $40 billion would be "shocking to the conscience." He also told the court that jurors had made no finding that any New Mexico resident had actually seen or heard the statements in question, or had been harmed by them.

Randi McGinn, a lawyer representing the state, urged the court to stand up to technology companies she described as believing they were beyond accountability.

State hails a historic win

Torrez called the award one of the largest, if not the largest, state verdicts ever secured against a company in U.S. history.

"This judgement should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley," Torrez said.

Under the New Mexico Constitution, the money will go toward the state's education system. Torrez said the scale of the award could fund school construction in the state for generations.

"We may have paid for the construction of schools for the next 100 years," he said.

Torrez also framed the outcome as a broader warning to large corporations, saying that "no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable."

The attorney general acknowledged, however, that the money will remain tied up while Meta pursues its appeal.

Meta pushes back hard

Meta responded with sharp criticism of both the ruling and the state's approach to enforcement.

Mahoney said the decision and the attorney general's tactics make it "all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico."

He argued that the lawsuit amounted to an attempt to tax speech in order to impose new rules on what people can say online. He added that Meta would keep working to build a safe and open platform for millions of Americans.

Meta has argued throughout the case that the state failed to show its statements were misleading or that anyone was harmed by them, a point likely to feature prominently on appeal.

What's next

The appeal is the most immediate step, and it could take months or longer to resolve. Legal observers note that appellate courts can reduce the number of violations a jury found, which would directly shrink the penalty. Interest will accrue on the judgment while the appeal is pending.

New Mexico is also seeking a court order to stop Meta from engaging in similar practices in the future. Such an injunction could have practical consequences for how Facebook communicates with users about privacy, beyond the financial penalty.

The appeal will be closely watched by other states and by the technology industry, since the case tests how far state consumer protection laws can reach in policing the statements of large online platforms. A ruling that upholds the penalty could encourage more state attorneys general to pursue similar claims, while a significant reduction could limit the strategy's appeal.

Mounting legal pressure on Meta

The ruling adds to a string of legal setbacks for Meta in New Mexico this year.

In March, a separate New Mexico jury found that Meta misled users about the safety of young people on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and ordered the company to pay $375 million in civil penalties. In August, Meta was ordered in that case to pay an additional $567 million into a state fund for teen mental health and to put in place measures to protect younger users.

Meta also reached a separate multistate settlement over claims about its platforms earlier this year. New Mexico did not join that agreement and instead pressed ahead with its own litigation, a decision that has now produced the largest award against the company to date.

The company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, faces a growing number of lawsuits in the United States over privacy, youth safety and the effects of social media on mental health. Many of those cases are being pursued by state attorneys general who have turned to consumer protection laws as a way to hold large technology companies accountable.

For now, the $25 billion ruling stands as a landmark in that effort, and its fate on appeal is likely to shape how aggressively states pursue such cases in the years ahead.