A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in civil penalties, and the part I keep coming back to is that this was the…

A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in civil penalties, and the part I keep coming back to is that this was the reduced number.

The jury found on Sept 25 that Meta committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's consumer protection law, tied to deceptive statements about Facebook privacy. The jury did reject some of the state's claims about content-removal assurances, including on COVID-19 misinformation.

The case goes back to Cambridge Analytica, where, per the state's case and reporting, a personality-quiz app harvested data from roughly 87 million profiles without consent, and that data was used for targeted political ads in Trump's 2016 campaign. The state AG sued in 2021.

State law allows up to $5,000 per violation, which could have put the total above $219 billion. New Mexico asked for $35-40 billion.

Meta argued for no more than $3.4 billion and said anything 10x that would be unconstitutional. Judge Francis Mathew landed at $25 billion, writing that Facebook's wrongdoing "goes to the heart of Facebook's core business practices." NBC News/Reuters reported it's the largest penalty against Meta in the wake of the scandal.

Meta says it plans to appeal, interest keeps accruing in the meantime, and the violation count could still come down. The money is earmarked for New Mexico's education system, though it may stay tied up while appeals play out. My read is that Meta's constitutional argument has a tough framing problem when the statutory ceiling sat near $219 billion. I'll be watching how the appeals court handles that gap.

$META

Sources:
NBC News/Reuters: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/meta-ordered-pay-25-billion-new-mexico-consumers-data-privacy-rcna604864
ABC News/AP: https://abcnews.com/Technology/wireStory/meta-ordered-pay-new-mexico-25-billion-deceiving-137452515
The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/technology/meta-penalty-new-mexico.html

Not financial advice. For informational and educational purposes only.