New Mexico took on Meta alone and won a $25 billion judgment over Facebook’s privacy violations

A judge on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for deceiving users about privacy and content moderation policies on Facebook.

Judge Francis Mathew handed down the amount, which state Attorney General Raúl Torrez described as “one of the largest, if not the single largest state verdict against a company in American history.” Torrez said the verdict should be a warning for tech companies and that New Mexico would continue to hold them accountable.

“This judgement should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley,” Torrez said at a news conference.

Under the New Mexico Constitution, fines for violations of consumer protection laws go state education spending.

“We may have paid for the construction of schools for the next 100 years,” said Torrez, who acknowledged that the money would be tied up if Meta appeals as expected.

Representatives for Meta, which previously said it plans to appeal the September verdict, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment about the amount.

The Menlo Park, California-based company was scheduled to report its quarterly earnings Wednesday afternoon and its shares were trading 2% higher following the penalty announcement.

New Mexico goes it alone Jurors in September found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws when a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested Facebook user data to generate targeted political ads for the 2016 election.

Forty-eight other states settled with Facebook in a nationwide case, but New Mexico chose to take the social media company to court on its own.

Attorneys for New Mexico had sought $35 billion to $40 billion, arguing that the company would only change its ways with a sum that affected its stock price.

Lawyers for Meta argued for paying no more than $3.4 billion.

An award 10 times that or even more would violate due process, was unconstitutional and would not hold up under appeal, they said.

Meta argued the state failed to prove misleading statements about privacy and that content moderation actually harmed New Mexicans.

Interest on the penalty would accrue during an appeal, but the number of violations Meta is charged with could be reduced.