Meta has been ordered to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found the company misled people about Facebook’s privacy protections and how it handled harmful content on the platform.
District Judge Francis Mathew issued the massive penalty on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, following a September jury verdict that found more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws.
The Meta privacy case stems from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exposed how personal information collected through Facebook could reach outside companies without users fully understanding or consenting to how their data would be used.
New Mexico filed its lawsuit in 2021, accusing Meta of misleading consumers about who could access their personal information and whether Facebook was enforcing its own privacy and content moderation policies.
The case centered partly on Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct political consulting firm that obtained information associated with as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party application. According to Reuters, the company used Facebook data for political targeting and worked with Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Investigators found that a personality quiz application collected information not only from people who used it but also from their Facebook friends, raising concerns about whether those individuals had meaningfully agreed to share their data.
The Federal Trade Commission previously accused Cambridge Analytica and people involved in the data collection operation of deceptive practices that allowed personal information to be gathered for voter profiling and targeting.
New Mexico’s lawsuit went beyond that scandal. State attorneys argued that Facebook also misrepresented its efforts to combat misinformation, enforce community standards, and address hate speech.
Jurors concluded in September that numerous public statements made by Facebook and its executives were misleading. The findings resulted in more than 43 million violations under New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act.
Those violations do not mean 43 million individual Facebook accounts were breached. According to Reuters, the calculations reflected the audiences exposed to the company’s misleading statements, including Facebook users and other New Mexico residents.
The potential financial consequences were even larger than the final judgment.
Under New Mexico law, each violation can carry a civil penalty of up to $5,000. The court determined that the violations supported a potential penalty exceeding $219 billion before reducing the amount to $25 billion.
State attorneys had requested approximately $35 billion to $40 billion. Meta’s legal team argued that the penalty should not exceed roughly $3.45 billion, claiming that a significantly larger award would be excessive and unconstitutional.
Judge Mathew ultimately rejected the company’s proposed limit.
The Meta privacy case now represents one of the largest financial penalties imposed against the social media company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
However, Facebook users should not expect individual checks from the judgment.
According to the Associated Press, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez explained that penalties collected under the state’s consumer protection laws are designated for public education.
That means the money could eventually support New Mexico’s education system rather than being distributed directly to people whose Facebook data may have been compromised.
Torrez described the judgment as a warning to Silicon Valley that major technology companies can face substantial consequences for misleading consumers.
The state would still need to collect the money, and that process is far from guaranteed to happen immediately.
Meta has challenged the findings and is expected to pursue an appeal. The company maintains that New Mexico failed to establish that consumers were personally harmed by the statements at issue.
According to the Associated Press, Meta’s attorneys also disputed the method used to calculate millions of violations, arguing that the state had not demonstrated that each person counted actually saw the statements or suffered harm.
Those arguments could become central to the appeals process, potentially affecting the final amount Meta must pay.
The $25 billion judgment also comes years after Facebook reached another major settlement over consumer privacy.
In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission announced a $5 billion penalty against Facebook for violating an earlier privacy order and misleading users about their ability to control personal information.
That federal settlement also required Facebook to strengthen oversight of its privacy practices and establish additional accountability measures.
The latest New Mexico judgment is five times that earlier federal penalty, although the new ruling remains subject to legal challenges.
It is also separate from another significant case New Mexico brought against Meta involving the safety of younger social media users.
In August 2026, the New Mexico Department of Justice announced that a court had ordered Meta to pay $567 million to address harms associated with its platforms and implement additional safety protections for children.
That ruling followed a separate $375 million civil penalty imposed earlier in the year, bringing the combined financial exposure from the youth safety litigation to $942 million.
The cases involve different legal claims, but both have placed Meta’s handling of user protections under scrutiny in New Mexico.
For the Meta privacy case, the financial stakes remain unusually high. According to local outlet Source New Mexico, the $25 billion judgment is also subject to interest while the penalty remains unpaid, adding another potential financial burden as the litigation continues.
New Mexico has not limited its efforts to financial penalties. The state is also seeking an injunction intended to prevent Meta from engaging in similar deceptive practices in the future.
Meta’s expected appeal will determine whether the $25 billion judgment survives, is reduced, or faces additional legal proceedings before New Mexico can collect the money.
