New Mexico judge orders Meta to pay $25 billion after jury finds consumer-law violations

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay the state $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for nearly 44 million violations of state consumer laws. The case concerns claims that Meta deceived users about privacy. The award is described as the largest fine ever imposed on the owner of Facebook and the largest fine against the social media company.

U.S. district court judge Francis J. Mathew set the penalty by finding that the harm extended to New Mexico’s entire population of 2 million residents. The jury’s findings, as Mathew characterized them, were that Facebook misled the public and exploited users’ limited knowledge of the company’s practices.

The judgment thus applied the consumer-law violations across the state’s population rather than limiting the harm calculation to people shown to have encountered particular statements. The scope of that harm was contested in court.

At an October 1 hearing, Meta attorney Matt Nicholson argued that the jury had not found that any New Mexican heard or saw the statements at issue or had been harmed by them. Nicholson also argued that an award as high as $40 billion would violate due process and the Constitution, and would not survive an appeal.

Those arguments put Meta’s objection to the amount in terms of both the legal ceiling on penalties and the evidence connecting residents to the alleged harm. Meta had sought a penalty closer to $5 billion, while $40 billion had been proposed earlier in the case. The judge ultimately ordered $25 billion.

The trial record, as described in the reporting, indicated that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg knew the company was making misleading public representations over a period of 11 years. The jury’s liability finding and the judge’s population-wide harm calculation underpin the final award. New Mexico Attorney General Torrez said the money could pay for school construction for 100 years.

He also acknowledged that the funds would remain tied up while Meta appeals. That means the state’s ability to use the award depends on the legal challenge, even though the judge has entered the $25 billion order. New Mexico attorney Randi McGinn urged the court to stand up to technology companies she characterized as believing they could act without consequences.

Meta’s position, as presented by Nicholson, focused on the absence of jury findings that residents had seen the statements or suffered harm, as well as the constitutional limits he said constrained the amount.

The two sides therefore presented different views of how broadly the jury’s findings support a penalty: the judge applied the harm to the state’s full population, while Meta disputed that evidentiary basis. The order followed a jury verdict and is now subject to Meta’s appeal.

The reporting does not specify the appeal’s schedule or the legal grounds Meta will pursue beyond the arguments Nicholson made at the hearing. Meta shares were trading 2% higher following the penalty announcement; the company was scheduled to report quarterly earnings that afternoon.