New Mexico Judge Orders Meta to Pay $25 Billion

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion (£18.7 billion) in civil penalties on Wednesday after a jury found that the company misled consumers about data privacy. Judge Francis Mathew’s ruling also imposes 15% annual interest until the penalty is paid in full.

Meta predicts it will prevail on appeal. In court, the company argued: “The jury didn’t make findings that any New Mexican heard or saw these statements, or was harmed by them.”

The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which broke in 2018. The firm gained access to personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. New Mexico’s attorney general sued Meta in 2021 following revelations about the harvesting of users’ data.

On September 25, jurors found that 26 of 29 challenged statements made by Meta and its leadership were misleading. The jury found the company liable for roughly 43.9 million willful violations of New Mexico’s consumer-protection law. The ruling says jurors counted the reasonably expected or anticipated audience for each misleading statement, assigning either 1,386,648 or 2,100,000 violations per statement.

Mathew wrote that “Facebook’s misrepresentations about users’ control of their data were not isolated incidents, but rather a systemic pattern of deception.” He described wrongdoing that extended over years, was broadcast to the public and went to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices.

Meta’s C.J. Mahoney described New Mexico’s enforcement approach as a tax on speech intended to impose new rules about what people could say online. He argued that the ruling and the state’s approach made doing business in New Mexico nearly impossible.

The size of the penalty

The state-law calculation produced a figure far above the final award: the maximum $5,000 (£3,733) penalty multiplied by 43,899,720 violations amounted to about $219.5 billion (£164 billion). Mathew found that state law warranted that amount but reduced the award to $25 billion (£18.7 billion).

New Mexico’s lawyers argued that Meta was unlikely to change its conduct meaningfully unless the penalty was large enough to affect its stock price. Raúl Torrez framed the case as a test of whether technology companies could mislead consumers about personal information without meaningful consequences, arguing that they had operated as though size and influence put them beyond legal reach.

Meta urged Mathew to cap the penalties at $3.45 billion (£2.58 billion), warning that a higher figure risked driving businesses out of the state. It argued that an award above its proposed cap would violate due process and constitutional protections against excessive fines.

Legal experts told Reuters that Meta has a decent chance of substantially reducing the fine on appeal through constitutional claims.

From penalties to product changes

The case has not yet determined what product changes Meta must make, CNET reported. Michael Stokes argued in analysis reported by the outlet that large fines alone were unlikely to change Meta’s products; an enforceable product-design order, backed by independent compliance checks, would be more effective. Mathew’s written order leaves a decision on orders requiring changes in Meta’s conduct pending further legal briefing.

Stokes pointed to Meta’s share-price rise on the day of the judgment as an indication of how markets viewed a fine by itself.

Under New Mexico law, the judgment money is directed to education spending, Torrez said. But he said the funding would be delayed during Meta’s expected appeal.