Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Media & Technology Conference held at Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, USA on July 9, 2026.
Brendan McDiarmid | Reuters
meta The company was ordered Wednesday by a New Mexico court to pay a $25 billion fine as part of a data privacy lawsuit stemming from the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal nearly a decade ago.
The fine, disclosed in court filings, comes after a Santa Fe jury found in September that the social media giant was responsible for misleading the state’s public about how it protects and collects user data and prevents the spread of harmful information on its services.
The jury concluded that Mr. Mehta had violated more than 43 million state tort laws, and each violation carries a civil penalty of up to $5,000, but the responsibility for determining the final penalty rested with a New Mexico judge. Wednesday’s filing revealed that the state was awarded $219.5 billion in restitution, but the fine was ultimately reduced to $25 billion.
“The unusual number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the broad scope of the violations, the involvement of Facebook executives, the large number of viewers in New Mexico, and the clearly intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements documented in the court records support a fine of $5,000 per jury-found violation, the highest level allowed under the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act,” the New Mexico District Court judge said. Frances Matthew wrote in the filing.
The judge added that interest on the fine shall accrue at 15% annually until the fine is paid in full.
“For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as if their size and influence were beyond the reach of the law,” New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres said in a statement.
He added: “This penalty order shows that these violations have real consequences.”
CJ Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, criticized the fine in a statement, saying he was “confident” the company “will prevail on appeal.”
“This ruling and the Attorney General’s approach to enforcement have made it nearly impossible to do business in New Mexico,” Mahoney said in a statement. “The core of this lawsuit seeks to impose a speech tax to enforce new rules for what people can say online.”
Meta previously resolved various data privacy cases across the U.S. stemming from Cambridge Analytica as part of a comprehensive nearly $17 billion settlement in August with a coalition of state attorneys general in separate federal cases related to child safety and mental health. But New Mexico was not included in the settlement, and the state’s data privacy case stemming from Meta’s Cambridge Analytica scandal moved to trial in September.
In 2022, the social media giant agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from its Cambridge Analytica scandal that began in 2018. The scandal rocked Mark Zuckerberg’s company before it officially changed its name to Meta, and raised questions about Facebook’s data practices, focusing on allegations that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed the information of 87 million users. Practice.
“Facebook did not conduct the comprehensive investigation it promised” in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica revelations, Matthew said in the filing.
“Pressure from senior executives to reduce costs, lack of adequate enforcement resources, inadequate investigative techniques, and a desire not to set a precedent for future investigations” all contributed to what the judge characterized as a “deliberately ineffective” internal investigation by Facebook, the complaint said.
Former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas originally brought the state’s Cambridge Analytica case in 2021, and current AG Torres oversaw the related case.
Mr. Torrez also led the state’s child safety case against Mr. Mehta, which resulted in a jury in March ruling that the social media company must pay $375 million for violating the state’s tort law. A New Mexico judge later ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a sinking fund as part of the second phase of the lawsuit, which determined the social media company’s actions caused a public nuisance.
Meta disagrees with New Mexico’s ruling and said it plans to appeal.
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