Meta Platforms has been ordered to pay a $25 billion penalty after a New Mexico jury found the company misled Facebook users regarding its handling of personal data and other platform practices. The legal action stems from fallout surrounding the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica scandal.
New Mexico Judge Francis Mathew issued the financial penalty on Wednesday. The ruling follows a trial where jurors determined that Meta made dozens of misleading statements to users over the course of years. The Cambridge Analytica firm, which previously worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, improperly obtained information from as many as 87 million Facebook users via a third-party application without proper consent.
New Mexico originally filed its lawsuit against Meta in 2021. The state accused the technology giant of deceiving users regarding who could access their personal information and how the platform handled harmful content. Jurors examined 29 specific statements during the trial, finding that 26 of them were misleading. Based on those findings, the jury determined that Meta committed more than 43 million individual violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws.
Judge Mathew noted in his order that the statutory violations could have carried a maximum penalty exceeding $219 billion under state law. However, he ultimately reduced the assessment to $25 billion. Meta had previously urged the court to cap any financial penalty at $3.45 billion.
“Facebook’s wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” Mathew wrote in his written decision.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez praised the judgment, describing it as one of the largest ever levied against Meta by a single state government. Torrez emphasized that the outcome serves as a clear warning to technology companies operating within the state and beyond regarding consumer protection enforcement.
Meta officials immediately announced plans to appeal the ruling. C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, argued in a public statement that the judicial decision and the attorney general’s enforcement strategy create an unworkable business environment within New Mexico. Mahoney characterized the lawsuit as an attempt to impose financial burdens on speech and establish new operational rules for online discourse, adding that the company remains confident it will prevail in higher courts.
Legal experts suggest that the case illustrates broader liabilities facing major technology firms under state consumer protection statutes. Monte Mann, a business litigation partner at Armstrong Teasdale, noted that the accumulation of penalties across millions of individual consumers can quickly produce extraordinary financial figures, regardless of whether the final penalty is ultimately reduced on appeal.
