Key Highlights

  • A New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay USD 25 billion in penalties tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
  • A Santa Fe jury found in September that Meta misled state residents about how it safeguards and collects user data.
  • The filing showed the state was awarded USD 219.5 billion before the penalty was reduced to USD 25 billion.
  • Meta said it is confident of prevailing on appeal, and interest on the penalty accrues at 15 percent a year.

The Penalty

A New Mexico court on Wednesday ordered Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) to pay USD 25 billion in penalties in a data privacy case that stems from the Cambridge Analytica scandal of nearly a decade ago. The penalty was disclosed in a court filing.

A jury in a Santa Fe courthouse found in September that the company misled state residents about how it safeguards and collects user data, and about how it prevents harmful information from spreading on its services.

How the Number Was Reached

The jury concluded that Meta committed more than 43 million violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act. Each violation carries a civil penalty of up to USD 5,000, and a New Mexico judge, rather than the jury, set the final fine. The filing showed the state was awarded USD 219.5 billion, and the penalty was then reduced to USD 25 billion.

District Court Judge Francis Mathew wrote that the number of willful violations, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership and the size of the New Mexico audience supported the highest penalty the law allows, USD 5,000 per violation. The judge added that interest on the penalty accrues at 15 percent each year until the fine is paid in full.

The Judge's Findings

Mathew wrote that Facebook "did not conduct the comprehensive investigation that it promised" after the Cambridge Analytica revelations. The filing said pressure from senior executives to keep costs down, a lack of enforcement resources, inadequate investigative techniques and a desire not to create precedent for future investigations all contributed to what the judge called a "willfully ineffective" internal examination.

Reactions From Both Sides

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement that powerful technology companies have operated for too long as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law. He said the penalty order shows that violations carry real consequences.

Meta's chief legal officer criticized the penalty in a statement. The company said it is confident of prevailing on appeal. It said the ruling and the attorney general's approach make it all but impossible to do business in New Mexico, and that the lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech.

A Long Run of Cambridge Analytica Cases

Meta previously resolved a range of Cambridge Analytica-derived data privacy lawsuits across the country as part of an August settlement of nearly USD 17 billion with a coalition of state attorneys general in a separate federal case about child safety and mental health. New Mexico was not part of that settlement, so its data privacy case went to trial in September.

In 2022, the company agreed to pay USD 725 million to settle a class action that also grew out of the scandal. The scandal began in 2018 and centered on allegations that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed the information of 87 million users, which raised questions about Facebook's data handling.

Other New Mexico Cases

Former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas filed the Cambridge Analytica lawsuit in 2021, while Torrez oversaw the trial. Torrez also led the state's child safety trial against Meta, which ended in a March jury ruling ordering the company to pay USD 375 million for violating the Unfair Practices Act. A New Mexico judge later ordered Meta to pay USD 567 million into an abatement fund in a second phase that found the company's actions created a public nuisance.