A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, to pay $25 billion in civil penalties after a jury found that the company misled users about data privacy and other practices.
Judge Francis Mathew issued the ruling on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, following a September 25 jury verdict that found Meta responsible for 43,899,725 violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act.
The lawsuit, brought by the state’s attorney general, Raúl Torrez, arose from allegations involving Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting company that obtained personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party application.
Cambridge Analytica was involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The New Mexico case examined Facebook’s representations about access to personal information, user privacy controls, misinformation and the handling of harmful content.
Jurors determined that 26 of 29 statements made by Meta and its executives were misleading. The violations were calculated using the number of users or New Mexico residents reached by the statements.
Under state law, penalties of up to $5,000 can be imposed for each violation. Mathew calculated that the findings could support a penalty exceeding $219 billion but reduced the amount payable to $25 billion.
During an October 1 hearing, lawyers representing New Mexico requested penalties of between $35 billion and $40 billion. Meta argued that the amount should be limited to $3.45 billion, disputing the state’s calculations and maintaining that it had not been established that consumers were actually misled.
New Mexico law directs the proceeds of such penalties to the state’s school system. Meta has indicated that it intends to appeal the judgment.
The ruling follows separate proceedings in New Mexico concerning child safety on Facebook and Instagram. In that case, Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in civil penalties and a further $567 million for measures addressing youth safety and mental health.
