Security4 publishers2 min readPublished Updated
New Mexico asks for up to $40 billion after jury counts 43 million Meta violations
New Mexico asked a state judge for up to $40 billion from Meta after a jury found more than 43 million violations of its Unfair Practices Act. That is seven to eight times Meta's 2019 FTC settlement, sought over public statements about privacy and hate speech.
The Watch · Security desk
What happened
- The finding rests on dozens of statements by Meta and its top executives that Attorney General Raúl Torrez said deceived residents after Cambridge Analytica.
- The Unfair Practices Act allows a penalty of up to $5,000 per violation, a theoretical maximum of $219 billion on the jury's count.
- Meta's attorney, Matthew Nicholson of Williams & Connolly, said the state offered no evidence any resident saw or heard the statements, or was harmed by them.
- Judge Francis Mathew of the First Judicial District Court gave both sides time for more briefs and said he would rule within three weeks.
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Why it matters
- cost Even the $35 billion low end would cost Meta about 5.7 times the roughly $6.2 billion it paid across its three Cambridge Analytica settlements combined.
- contradiction A jury count in the tens of millions, against Meta's claim that no resident was shown to have seen a single statement, gives Meta its constitutional argument against any large award.
- precedent If Mathew awards anything in the requested range, a state will have turned a company's public privacy statements into a per-violation penalty measured in tens of billions.
New Mexico is asking for a fraction of what the count allows. Randi McGinn, of Montoya Love Curry & Sievers, asked the judge to apply the full $5,000 rate and then reduce the total to between $35 billion and $40 billion. She said the maximum would draw due process concerns [5]. The request is 16% to 18% of the ceiling [3]. Spread across the jury's count, $40 billion comes to less than $1,000 a violation [2].
"This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money and its stock price," McGinn said at the hearing in Santa Fe [6]. "I'm going to ask you to award an amount that will affect its stock price." [7] She said an award that size would be the largest verdict in US legal history [8].
Nicholson said any award in the tens of billions would be "a constitutional violation of epic proportions" and would drive legitimate business out of the state [9]. Mathew appeared skeptical of Meta's arguments several times. He questioned Meta's suggestion that New Mexico should accept less because it has a smaller population. He also noted that many of the awards Meta cited were negotiated settlements [10].
Those settlements make up Meta's record on Cambridge Analytica. It paid the Federal Trade Commission $5 billion in 2019 [11]. It settled a consumer class action for $725 million in 2022 [12]. This summer it paid $459 million to resolve cases from 46 states and two territories, in a deal that did not include New Mexico [13]. The state has already beaten Meta at trial once this year. A separate jury verdict over teen mental health and child sexual exploitation carried a $375 million civil penalty [14].
So far the finding is one state jury applying one statute. Bloomberg Law's report does not include the jury's method for turning the statements into its count. Working back from the statute's ceiling at $5,000 a violation gives about 43.8 million [1]. Mathew gave no figure for the award [15].
What to watch
- Mathew's ruling, due within three weeks of the hearing, and the per-violation rate it applies to the jury's count.
- Whether Meta appeals on the due process grounds both sides raised at the hearing.
- Whether other state attorneys general bring per-violation claims over public privacy statements after the ruling.