A New Mexico court ordered Facebook to pay $25 billion after a jury found nearly 44 million consumer-protection violations tied to the Cambridge Analytica era. Meta says it will appeal.
One state has just landed one of the largest penalties ever ordered against a tech company. On Oct. 21, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced that a court had ordered Facebook to pay $25 billion in civil penalties under the state’s Unfair Practices Act.
How we got here
New Mexico sued in 2021. The case grew out of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when personal data from Facebook users was harvested and misused. The state’s case went further than the scandal itself. It challenged what Facebook told the public about its data practices, third-party access to personal information, and its efforts against misinformation and hate speech.
The trial came in two phases:
- Liability. A jury found that Facebook violated the state’s consumer protection law 43,899,725 times.
- Penalty. The court then set the amount: $25 billion.
New Mexico pursued the case on its own instead of joining a multistate settlement, so its claims were tested at trial.
Where it ranks
The state’s announcement calls the order one of the largest financial penalties against a corporation in U.S. history. It describes the case as holding Facebook accountable under a state consumer protection law, rather than under a federal privacy law.
The verdict came after a trial that looked at three things: Facebook’s statements about user privacy, third parties’ access to personal information, and how the company handled harmful content. In the state’s words, the jury’s findings “established liability,” and the penalty order then set the financial consequences under New Mexico law.
What the judge found
In his decision, Judge Francis J. Mathew wrote that Facebook kept making public claims about user control of data, third-party misuse, misinformation, hate speech and equal enforcement after its own employees, researchers and senior staff had found internally that the company couldn’t keep those promises.
The jury also found that the deceptive messaging reached statements made by executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Meta’s response
Meta said it will appeal. C.J. Mahoney, the company’s chief legal officer, told Yahoo Finance the lawsuit seeks to “impose a tax on speech.” Meta also said the decision makes it “all but impossible” to do business in New Mexico.
Torrez said the case “has always been about more than one company or one scandal.” In the state’s release, he called it “a historic day for New Mexico and for consumers across the country,” and said the outcome shows “no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable.” The New Mexico Department of Justice says it will keep pursuing companies that engage in deceptive business practices.
How big is $25 billion?
For context, the Federal Trade Commission’s 2019 privacy penalty against Facebook, then a record, was $5 billion. This year Meta also reached a $17 billion settlement with states over allegedly addictive platform design, and a separate New Mexico judge ordered nearly $1 billion in a youth-safety case, according to Mashable’s reporting.
What it means beyond Meta
The case shows that state consumer protection laws can carry real weight against large tech companies. They don’t require new federal privacy legislation. They require proof that a company’s public promises didn’t match what it actually did. For any SaaS or consumer app, the practical takeaway:
- Audit your public privacy claims against how your product actually works.
- Write down internal concerns and fix them, because internal findings can become trial evidence.
- Treat marketing and executive statements about data as legal commitments.
The appeal is likely to take a long time, so the final number is not settled. We’ll follow the case.
