Judge orders Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion over Facebook privacy violations; company to appeal 

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay the state $25 billion this week.

The ruling came after a jury found Facebook misled the public about how it handles personal data. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, plans to appeal.

Any money the state receives will support education. However, the payment could be tied up for years because of the appeal. A higher court could also reduce the amount, the Associated Press reported.

Judge Francis Mathew set the penalty after a September jury found Facebook violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act 43,899,725 times. Mathew based the financial penalty on the number of violations, according to the state Department of Justice.

He wrote that Facebook’s conduct “goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” Reuters reported.

The case dates back to 2021 and stems from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. A third-party app collected personal information from up to 87 million Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica used the data to build voter profiles and target political ads. Its most notable client was Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

New Mexico’s case isn’t just about data collection. It challenged Facebook’s claims about users’ control over their information. The state questioned whether Meta was truthful about enforcing its content rules.

Mathew found the company kept making promises despite its employees knowing it couldn’t keep them. He also criticized Meta’s response.

Facebook promised a thorough review of outside developers’ access to user data. Yet the judge found poor records and weak enforcement undermined that work, The Record reported.

The law allowed for a $5,000 penalty per violation. That put the maximum fine at $220 billion, but Mathew chose $25 billion. The judgment carries 15% annual interest until Meta pays it, Source New Mexico reported.

Meta’s chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, thinks the company will win its appeal.

“At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online,” Mahoney said in a statement.

Attorney General Raúl Torrez said the outcome showed even large tech companies must pay for misleading consumers.

“Today’s result makes clear that no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable,” he said in a release.

New Mexico’s constitution says fines the state collects under general laws go into its school fund.

Torrez noted the possible benefit for schools but acknowledged an appeal could delay payment.

“We may have paid for the construction of schools for the next 100 years,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

The privacy case isn’t the same as another New Mexico lawsuit over children’s safety on Facebook and Instagram.

Heartlander News reported in March that a jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in that case. The state had evidence showing how the platforms exposed children to sexual predators and used features the company designed to keep them addicted.

“This is a watershed moment for every parent concerned about what could happen to their kids when they go online,” Torrez said after that verdict.

In August, a judge ordered another $567 million to address harm to young people’s mental health. That brought the total in the child-safety case to $942 million. The order also required stronger safeguards for minors. Those include steps to reduce sexual exploitation, according to the state Department of Justice.