Meta ordered to pay $25 billion in New Mexico Facebook privacy case

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta Platforms to pay $25 billion in civil penalties on Oct. 21, 2026, following a jury verdict finding that Facebook misled consumers. The decision marks a major financial consequence in the state’s litigation arising from the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

Judge Francis Mathew determined the penalty after jurors established the company’s liability in September under New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. The New Mexico Department of Justice said the verdict covered nearly 44 million violations, separating the jury’s findings about unlawful conduct from the judge’s subsequent decision on punishment.

The court calculated that the statutory maximum of $5,000 per violation supported a penalty of approximately $219.5 billion, before reducing the award to $25 billion. In its findings, the court pointed to the repeated conduct, involvement of senior leadership and size of the audiences reached as reasons supporting the maximum per-violation assessment.

New Mexico filed the lawsuit in 2021 after revelations that Cambridge Analytica obtained personal information from millions of Facebook users through a third-party application, Reuters reported. The political consulting firm’s work included Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, making the handling of Facebook data an issue extending beyond individual privacy settings.

The state’s case examined what Facebook told consumers about access to their personal information and how those assurances compared with its practices. According to Reuters, jurors found 26 of 29 statements by the company and its leadership misleading, with violations calculated using the audiences for the statements rather than a count of individual data breaches.

New Mexico pursued its claims independently instead of joining a multistate settlement, the state Justice Department said. Attorney General Raúl Torrez framed the outcome as evidence that state consumer protection laws can impose meaningful consequences on technology companies, particularly when their public assurances concern the treatment of personal information.

Meta disputes the case against it. In court filings described by Reuters, the company argued that New Mexico had not proved any consumer was actually misled and urged the judge to cap penalties at $3.45 billion, warning that a larger assessment could discourage businesses from operating in the state.

The award also substantially exceeds the $5 billion penalty imposed on Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission in 2019, according to The Associated Press. Its significance rests not only on its size but on New Mexico obtaining a trial verdict and a separate penalty determination rather than resolving its allegations through settlement.

The next stage is an expected appeal, not an immediate end to the dispute. Meta’s chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, told Axios the company expects to prevail on appeal, while The Associated Press reported that litigation could delay payment for years and potentially reduce the violations supporting the award.