Article 21 · Technology
How a jury's counting method turned one Meta case into a $25 billion penalty
Meta is the company behind Facebook and Instagram. A New Mexico jury counted every state resident who could have seen a misleading statement as a separate violation, and a judge set the penalty that followed. Meta will appeal.
What the case is about
Meta owns Facebook and Instagram. New Mexico sued it in 2021 over what Facebook told users about their data. The case traces back to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that obtained data on as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. That scandal broke in 2018.
On September 25th a Santa Fe jury found Facebook liable for more than 43.8 million willful violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act. The statements concerned data sharing, the review of third-party apps, misinformation and hate speech. On October 21st Judge Francis J. Mathew set the penalty at $25 billion.
How the count produced the number
State law caps the civil penalty at $5,000 for each willful violation. The jury multiplied each misleading statement by its potential audience in New Mexico, a state of 2.1 million people.
That count gave the judge a statutory maximum of more than $219 billion. He reduced it to $25 billion. The state had asked for $35 billion to $40 billion. Meta argued for no more than $3.45 billion.
The same statute shows how much the counting rule matters. In the state's separate child-safety case against Meta, the same maximum rate produced 75,000 violations and $375 million.
Why other states are not in the same position
Forty-seven states and other jurisdictions settled their Cambridge Analytica privacy claims against Meta in August, for $459 million combined. New Mexico and Florida did not sign. In 2019 the Federal Trade Commission imposed a $5 billion penalty on Facebook over the same scandal.
Other states have different statutes, penalty caps and counting rules. No appeals court has endorsed New Mexico's count, and most states already released these claims.
What happens next
Meta says it will appeal. Its chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said the company is confident it will prevail. Meta argues the jury found no New Mexican saw the statements or was harmed by them.
Legal experts quoted by Reuters expect the appeal to target the count. Peter Ormerod of Villanova University calls it the most vulnerable point on appeal. Daryl Lim of Penn State Dickinson Law said the size alone does not mean the penalty will be overturned.
Nothing has been paid. New Mexico's lawyer Randi McGinn estimated the appeal could take three to five years. Interest of 15% a year runs until Meta pays, according to the trade site PPC Land's reading of the judgment. That is about $3.75 billion a year.
The things to watch:
- Meta's notice of appeal in New Mexico v. Meta (D-101-CV-2021-00132), shown on the New Mexico courts case lookup.
- Whether Meta asks the court to pause collection by posting a bond. In the child-safety case it asked to post a $1.8 billion bond against a $942 million judgment.
- The judge's ruling on injunctive relief, which he reserved pending further briefing, according to PPC Land.
- Meta's annual report on Form 10-K for 2026, for how it describes and accounts for the judgment.