Meta ordered to pay $25 billion over New Mexico privacy verdict

A Santa Fe jury found Meta liable on Sept 25, and the penalty was set on Oct 1, after the state pursued claims over misleading privacy statements.

A jury in Santa Fe found Meta liable on September 25 for nearly 44 million violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act, ruling that the company misled consumers about privacy and platform safety, according to a Crowell & Moring client alert. Jurors reviewed 29 statements made by Meta and its leadership, including ones about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, data access, hate speech and misinformation, and found 26 of them misleading, Traders Union reported.

On October 1, Judge Francis Mathew of the First Judicial District Court set the penalty at $25 billion. New Mexico's Department of Justice had asked for $35 billion to $40 billion, while Meta argued any award should be capped at $3.45 billion as unconstitutional, Traders Union reported. KTSM News reported that the violations could theoretically have exposed Meta to penalties as high as $219 billion under the state's law, though the final figure was left to the judge.

The case traces back to the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the consultancy harvested personal data from up to 87 million Facebook users without their consent, The Epoch Times reported. Tech Insider reported that this verdict is Meta's third distinct courtroom loss in New Mexico in seven months, following two earlier trials over the company's handling of harmful content reaching young users.

The $25 billion figure sits apart from the $18 billion teen-safety settlement total Meta priced in earlier this quarter, which investors treated as a capped and known cost and which helped drive the stock's double-digit rally in September. This judgment reopens the scale of Meta's privacy-related liabilities instead of closing it, and it lands as the company also faces fresh regulatory scrutiny in the UK and New York, along with pushback from corporate banking partners over its Muse rollout. Taken together, the legal and regulatory pressure sits awkwardly against the AI-driven optimism that has otherwise shaped recent coverage of the company.