New Mexico asks judge to fine Meta $35 billion to $40 billion for misleading users

Attorneys for the State of New Mexico asked a district court judge on Oct. 1 to fine Meta between $35 billion and $40 billion, weeks after a Santa Fe jury found that the company willfully violated state law on unfair and deceptive trade practices. Judge Francis Mathew of New Mexico's First Judicial District said he will decide the penalty within two to three weeks. "When the parties go to trial, they roll the dice," Mathew said. "They have to accept the consequences of their decision to go to trial, do they not?"

What the jury found

On Sept. 25, a Santa Fe jury found that Facebook committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act. Jurors weighed 29 statements made by the company and its leadership and found 26 of them misleading, about who could access users' data, how the company handled hate speech and misinformation, and other policies. State law lets the judge impose up to $5,000 per violation, a maximum Attorney General Raúl Torrez has said could total $219 billion.

The state's request

Randi McGinn, the attorney representing New Mexico, asked Mathew to order a penalty of $35 billion to $40 billion, about 20% of the statutory maximum, saying the amount would hold Meta accountable while respecting its due process rights if the case is appealed. "This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price," McGinn said. She added that the fine "would serve the purpose of deterrence, not just for Meta, but for any big company that would like to lie to the people of New Mexico."

Meta's response

Meta's lawyer, Matt Nicholson, called the request an "astronomical penalty" that would violate the company's rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and accused the state of trying to "run up the score" on penalties. In court filings, Meta urged Mathew to cap the penalty at $3.45 billion, proposing a per-violation amount that would yield a judgment between $345 million and $3.45 billion. Nicholson said the state's request is double the $21 billion judgment against British Petroleum after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and that New Mexico did not prove any consumer was actually harmed. He cited Supreme Court precedent that the due process clause bars penalties "wholly disproportionate to the offense."

What happens next

Mathew said he expects to issue a ruling by late October. The lawsuit, filed in 2021, grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a British political consulting firm harvested data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app without their consent. McGinn has said Meta is likely to appeal any judgment, meaning New Mexico may not see any money for years. The case is State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms Inc., D-101-CV-2021-00132, in New Mexico's First Judicial District Court.