A New Mexico Court Has Ordered Meta to Pay $25 Billion Over Data Privacy Claims. Here Is What the Ruling Says.

A New Mexico court has ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion penalty for data privacy violations linked to the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal. Meta plans to appeal.

The verdict

Following a September trial, a Santa Fe jury found Meta liable for misleading New Mexico residents about its data collection, its privacy safeguards, and its failure to stop harmful information from spreading. The jury identified more than 43 million violations of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act.

How the penalty was set

The Act allows a maximum civil penalty of $5,000 per violation. Applied to every violation the jury identified, that produces a figure of $219.5 billion. District Court Judge Francis Mathew reduced the final penalty to $25 billion and ordered that interest of 15% a year accrue until the balance is paid in full.

The court’s reasoning

Judge Mathew pointed to the “clear intentional and systematic nature” of Facebook’s repeated misstatements. The court also weighed how long the conduct lasted, how many New Mexico residents were affected, and the direct involvement of senior leadership.

The ruling also addressed how Facebook responded internally after the Cambridge Analytica fallout. According to the court filing, Facebook did not conduct the comprehensive audits it had publicly promised. The court found that the internal examination was “willfully ineffective,” citing explicit pressure from senior executives to minimise costs, a deliberate lack of adequate enforcement resources, and a strategic desire to avoid setting precedents for future investigations.

Meta’s position

Meta plans to appeal. Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said the state’s enforcement creates an environment where it is “all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico.” Meta argues that the lawsuit acts as a “tax on speech,” designed to enforce new regulations on online discourse rather than to protect data privacy.

Background

The Cambridge Analytica scandal began in 2018 over allegations that the political consulting firm improperly accessed the data of 87 million users. Meta agreed to a $725 million class-action settlement in 2022. In August this year it also reached a settlement of $17 billion with a coalition of state attorneys general. New Mexico opted out of that agreement, which allowed its own data privacy lawsuit to go to trial. The state filed that case in 2021 under former Attorney General Hector Balderas.

The ruling adds to Meta’s other legal proceedings in New Mexico. In a separate child safety case led by current Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a jury fined Meta $375 million for unfair practices in March, and a judge later ordered it to pay a further $567 million into an abatement fund after finding a public nuisance. Meta is appealing that combined judgment of nearly $1 billion as well.

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