A New Mexico state judge ordered Meta Platforms on Wednesday to pay $25 billion in penalties, concluding a legal battle sparked by the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal from nearly a decade ago.
The penalty, handed down in a court filing by New Mexico District Court Judge Francis Mathew, followed a September trial in Santa Fe. Jurors found the parent company of Facebook liable for misleading residents regarding its data security safeguards, user control options and efforts to curb harmful content, CNBC reported.
Record-Breaking Financial Penalties
Jurors concluded that Meta committed tens of millions of violations under the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act. Reports from CNBC, TechCrunch and The Verge stated that the jury identified more than 43 million violations, while Business Insider reported the total approached 50 million. Under state law, each violation allowed for a civil fine of up to $5,000.
While statutory calculations placed the preliminary fine at $219.5 billion, Mathew exercised judicial discretion to reduce the total amount to $25 billion, according to the court filing. The judge ruled that the judgment will accrue annual interest at a rate of 15 percent until Meta settles the debt.
Mathew wrote that the maximum allowable fine was justified by the evidence, citing the extensive scope of the infractions and the participation of company executives. In his filing, the judge emphasized “the extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership, the size of New Mexico audiences reached, and the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements.”
Mathew also noted in the ruling that the misconduct struck directly at core business mechanisms used to draw users to the platform and retain them, Business Insider reported.
Years of Litigation Over Cambridge Analytica
New Mexico first launched its legal challenge in 2021. The state focused on the misuse of private account information harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
During the two-week trial, prosecutors introduced internal executive communications, including evidence from a deposition given by Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. According to Business Insider, one message showed Zuckerberg discussing privacy controls, advising staff to “give them a chance to change their privacy settings but obviously don’t encourage it.”
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez praised the ruling, framing it as an accountability benchmark for Silicon Valley.
“For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law,” Torrez said in a statement, adding that “this penalty order demonstrates that those violations carry real consequences.”
Speaking to reporters after the decision, Torrez remarked that the financial recovery could potentially fund public school construction in the state for decades, TechCrunch reported.
Meta Prepares Appeal
Meta strongly contested the ruling on Wednesday, signaling that the legal fight is far from finished. The company argued that the ruling oversteps state regulatory authority and harms consumer access.
C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, said the company intends to challenge the judgment in appellate court. Mahoney asserted that the enforcement posture makes operating in New Mexico nearly impossible.
“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 corporate statement. “We are confident we will prevail on appeal.”
The penalty stands among the steepest corporate fines ever assessed in the U.S. Meta’s appeal will determine whether the multi-billion-dollar penalty survives higher judicial review.
