A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury concluded that the social media company misled consumers for years about how it handled their personal data.
Judge Francis Mathew issued the penalty, which New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called “one of the largest, if not the single largest state verdict against a company in American history.”
“This judgment should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley,” Torrez said during a news conference.
The verdict follows a September ruling in which jurors found that Facebook made false or deceptive claims about users’ control over the way their information was shared. Jurors also determined that the company misrepresented its practices by saying it did not sell or share personal data with advertisers.
The jury found that Meta’s “most senior leadership,” including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, made misleading statements about the platform’s privacy policies, according to Mathew’s ruling.
“These communications were part of a coherent strategy designed to mislead the public,” Mathew wrote.
The case centered on allegations that Facebook concealed the scope of a data breach involving a third-party personality quiz. The application collected information from about 87 million profiles and provided it to political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which used the data to create targeted advertisements.
In a statement released Wednesday, Torrez said the lawsuit “has always been about more than one company or one scandal.”
“It is about whether corporations can mislead consumers about what happens to their personal information without facing meaningful consequences,” he said.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Where the $25 billion could go
Under New Mexico’s Constitution, penalties collected for consumer protection violations are directed to state education programs.
“We may have paid for the construction of schools for the next 100 years,” Torrez said. He also cautioned that the funds could remain tied up if Meta appeals the ruling, an expected next step.
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While 48 other states reached a nationwide settlement with Facebook, New Mexico pursued its own case against the company in court.
New Mexico attorneys had requested between $35 billion and $40 billion, arguing that only a penalty substantial enough to affect Meta’s stock price would force the company to change its practices.
Meta’s lawyers argued that the penalty should be capped at $3.4 billion. They said a larger award would violate due process, be unconstitutional and fail to withstand an appeal.
In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission imposed a $5 billion fine on Facebook, then known as Meta, over allegations that Cambridge Analytica obtained users’ data without their permission.
Meta maintained that New Mexico had not demonstrated that its executives made deceptive privacy claims or that the company’s content moderation policies harmed residents of the state.
Meta shares gained $13.56, or 2%, to reach $707.81 in Wednesday afternoon trading.
contributed to this report.
