Meta Ordered To Pay Record $25 Billion Penalty In New Mexico Deception Case

Meta Platforms Inc. has been ordered to pay the state of New Mexico a civil penalty of $25 billion, one of the largest verdicts in US legal history, in a case stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal nearly a decade ago.

 

A jury in Santa Fe found that Meta had violated the state’s consumer protection laws more than 43 million times. The verdict was based on dozens of widely viewed statements by the company and its senior executives about its handling of hate speech and user data, including information shared with Cambridge Analytica and used to target voters in support of Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

 

The award to a single state far exceeds the $18 billion settlement Meta reached this summer with the majority of US attorneys general to resolve pending claims relating to the harm caused by social media use among young people and allegations of addiction.

 

In his ruling, Judge Francis Mathew calculated the maximum penalty under New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act at $5,000 per violation. Applied to the number of violations identified, that would have amounted to $219 billion. However, the judge reduced the award to $25 billion. The state had sought a penalty of between $35 billion and $40 billion.

 

“The clearly intentional and systemic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements” justified the award, Mathew wrote.

 

“Facebook’s wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” he said.

 

Meta Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said in a statement on Wednesday that the company was confident it would prevail on appeal.

 

“This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” Mahoney said. “At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online.”

 

Meta shares rose less than 1% during regular trading in New York on Wednesday, closing at $697.52. The stock gained about 2% in after-hours trading after the company raised its capital expenditure outlook for the year and issued an upbeat sales forecast for the fourth quarter as part of its regular earnings report.

 

The penalty is substantially higher than New Mexico’s projected annual revenue. The state is expected to generate $14.8 billion in general fund revenue in fiscal 2028. Its financial position has strengthened, with revenue forecasts revised upwards. The $25 billion penalty will accrue interest at an annual rate of 15% until it is paid in full.

 

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, said at a press conference that the award was “one of the single largest, if not the largest, single-state verdict against a company in American history”.

 

“This judgment should be a signal, an unambiguous message to anyone in Silicon Valley and beyond that New Mexico will stand strong and go to court,” he said.

 

Cambridge Analytica Settlements

 

The two-week trial in the First Judicial District Court of New Mexico centred on allegations that Meta had misled Facebook users about its privacy policies and the handling of their personal information following the Cambridge Analytica data leak almost a decade ago.

 

The attorney general also argued that the company had deceived the public about its content moderation decisions and policies on hate speech. Evidence presented during the trial suggested that some high-profile accounts were not subjected to the same scrutiny as those belonging to ordinary users.

 

Jurors watched video deposition testimony from Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

 

Meta has previously paid substantial sums to settle cases linked to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The company paid $5 billion to settle a case with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019 and agreed to a $725 million settlement in 2022 to resolve a consumer class action. It also paid $459 million under an agreement reached this summer to resolve cases brought by 46 states and two US territories.

 

New Mexico has proved a particularly costly opponent for Meta. Rather than joining coalitions of state attorneys general pursuing claims against the company, it opted to bring its own cases independently.

 

The $25 billion penalty comes months after New Mexico became the first US state to secure a jury verdict against Meta over allegations that Facebook and Instagram harm teenagers’ mental health and facilitate child sexual exploitation.

 

That trial, held earlier this year, resulted in a $375 million civil penalty. Meta was subsequently ordered to pay an additional $567 million to establish programmes aimed at addressing the youth mental health crisis.

 

The case is State of New Mexico v. Facebook Inc., New Mexico District Court, No. D-101-CV-202100132, October 21, 2026.