Meta Faces Potential $219 Billion Penalty After New Mexico Jury Verdict

 

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he will seek up to $219 billion in penalties against Meta Platforms Inc. after a jury found the company violated state law by misleading the public about its data privacy and content moderation policies.

 

The jury found Meta liable for violations relating to most of the 34 statements on the verdict sheet, with between 1.3 million and 2.1 million violations attributed to each statement. The number of violations was based either on the number of Facebook users in New Mexico or the total number of New Mexico residents in 2020.

 

First Judicial District Judge Francis Mathew in Santa Fe will determine the civil penalties, which can be as much as $5,000 per violation. The jury found 43,899,725 violations in total, meaning the maximum potential penalty is about $219.5 billion.

 

Torrez said at a press conference that the verdict was a “seminal moment” in holding Big Tech accountable. He said the New Mexico legal team would ask the court for the maximum penalty available under state law, although the final amount will be determined by the judge.

 

Torrez was the first state attorney general in the US to bring Meta to trial over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved the harvesting of data from millions of Facebook users.

 

The scandal, first revealed in 2018, involved a data scientist who developed a personality quiz app that collected information about Facebook users and their friends, involving as many as 87 million profiles. Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political research firm, obtained the data, which was subsequently used for political advertising during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

 

Meta had previously agreed to settlements totalling about $6 billion in connection with the scandal, including agreements with the US Federal Trade Commission, Facebook users and a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general. New Mexico and Washington, DC, did not join the multi-state settlement.

 

A Meta spokesperson said the company disagreed with the verdict and would continue to defend itself against “efforts to distort our record”.

 

The spokesperson said Meta had a First Amendment right to manage its platforms in a way it believed best served its community, including prioritising free speech, protecting users’ information and giving them control over their data.

 

The jury did not find Meta liable for deceptive trade practices in relation to three statements concerning content moderation. Those claims involved the company’s policies on removing graphic content, hate speech, misinformation and material that posed a real risk of harm.

 

The two-week trial revisited the Cambridge Analytica scandal and included video depositions from Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

 

New Mexico also pursued allegations that Meta had misled the public about its content moderation policies. The state relied in part on 2021 Facebook whistleblower disclosures concerning high-profile accounts that were allegedly exempt from some of the normal procedures for reviewing hate speech and explicit content.

 

The verdict came after a case brought by the New Mexico attorney general's office under the state's Unfair Practices Act. The case is State of New Mexico v. Facebook Inc., N.M. Dist. Ct., No. D-101-CV-202100132, September 25, 2026.