Meta Faces $25 Billion New Mexico Penalty in Cambridge Analytica Privacy Case

A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in civil penalties in a case arising from Facebook’s privacy practices and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Meta disputes the ruling and says it is confident it will prevail on appeal, meaning the order should not be described as money already collected by the state.

The New Mexico Department of Justice said the penalty follows a jury finding of 43,899,725 violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act. The jury established liability; the later court order determined the financial penalty. Those are separate stages of the case.

A case extending beyond one data scandal

The state challenged Facebook’s statements about personal information, third-party access to data, misinformation and hate speech. Cambridge Analytica obtained information associated with millions of Facebook users without their consent for political profiling, bringing wider scrutiny to the platform’s handling of data.

Reuters reported that Judge Francis Mathew considered a penalty above $219 billion warranted under the statutory calculation but reduced it to $25 billion. The scale of that calculation reflects the number of legal violations found, not a finding that New Mexico had tens of millions of different Facebook users.

Meta challenges the outcome

Meta’s chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said the company expects to win on appeal. Reuters reported that Meta had argued a multibillion-dollar penalty could violate constitutional protections involving due process and excessive fines. Those are the company’s legal arguments, not a ruling overturning the judgment.

The case is distinct from New Mexico’s separate proceedings concerning young users’ safety and from Meta’s earlier federal Cambridge Analytica settlement. Combining those amounts would obscure which conduct and legal process produced the latest order.

The judgment illustrates how state consumer-protection laws can impose substantial consequences for misleading statements about digital services. Whether this particular award survives appeal, changes in amount or is ultimately paid remains unresolved.

Sources

• New Mexico Department of Justice: penalty announcement and jury findings
• Reuters: court order, Meta response and appeal context