New Mexico Judge Orders Meta to Pay Twenty Five Billion Dollars

A New Mexico state court ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion penalty on Wednesday following a jury verdict that found the tech giant deceived residents about user data privacy and harmful content management.

The judgment stems from a two-week trial in Santa Fe where jurors determined that Meta committed more than 43 million individual violations of the state unfair practices act, carrying civil fines of up to $5,000 per violation.

While the initial calculation reached $219.5 billion based on the jury findings, New Mexico District Court Judge Francis Mathew reduced the final amount to $25 billion and ordered that interest accrue at an annual rate of 15 percent.

The penalty arises from a lawsuit originally filed in 2021 by the state attorney general over Meta handling of user records connected to the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal that emerged nearly a decade ago.

The legal action highlights ongoing tensions between state regulators and major technology companies over consumer protection, holding corporations accountable for systemic misstatements regarding personal information.

“For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law,” said Raúl Torrez, the New Mexico attorney general, in a statement.

Judge Mathew wrote in the court filing that the extraordinary number of violations and the direct involvement of senior leadership supported the heavy penalty.

The ruling noted that Facebook failed to conduct the comprehensive internal investigation it promised after the 2018 revelations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica had improperly harvested data from millions of users.

Meta strongly disagreed with the decision and announced plans to appeal the outcome.

“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,” said C.J. Mahoney, Meta chief legal officer, in a statement.

Mahoney added that the lawsuit sought to impose a tax on speech and create new rules for online communication.

The penalty follows other recent legal challenges for Meta, including an $18 billion settlement in August with a coalition of state attorneys general over child safety concerns, though New Mexico did not join that pact.

New Mexico also secured nearly $1 billion earlier this year in a separate case regarding child safety harms on Meta platforms.

It remains unclear how long the appeals process will take and whether higher courts will alter the record penalty imposed by the state judge.