A judge in New Mexico ordered Meta Platforms to pay the state $25 billion on Wednesday after a jury found the company had misled consumers about data privacy, marking one of the largest financial penalties in US history.
The ruling stems from allegations that Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, obtained data from millions of Facebook users without their consent. New Mexico sued Meta in 2021, accusing it of lying to users about who had access to their data.
Judge Francis Mathew found that a penalty of more than $219 billion was warranted based on state law, but reduced the figure to $25 billion. Jurors in September found that the company and its leadership made 26 misleading statements on data privacy, hate speech and other subjects. Multiplying those statements by their potential audience, they said the company had committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws, reports Reuters.
Meta Chief Legal Officer C J Mahoney said the company is confident it will win on appeal. “This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” Mahoney said.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said the penalty was one of the largest financial penalties against a corporation in US history. Meta previously faced a $5 billion penalty from the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
