SANTA FE, New Mexico – A New Mexico jury has found Facebook liable for deceiving users about how the social media platform protected their personal information, delivering a new legal setback to Meta over practices exposed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The jury found more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer-protection law, according to the Associated Press and New Mexico officials. The verdict came Friday after a two-week trial in the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe.
The amount Meta may ultimately have to pay has not yet been determined. The judge will decide the penalties, while attorneys for New Mexico are seeking the maximum $5,000 allowed for each violation.
The case focused on Facebook’s handling of user information following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which data from roughly 87 million Facebook profiles was obtained through a third-party personality-quiz application and provided to the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Jury finds repeated violations over data protections
The trial examined statements Facebook made to users about its data-protection practices and its handling of third-party applications.
Jurors reviewed 34 statements made by the company about data protection and content policies and found Facebook had deceived users in almost every case involving the privacy allegations, according to the Associated Press report on the verdict.
The jury also found that Facebook misled the public about investigations into third-party developers that could obtain or harvest user information after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The verdict does not mean the judge has imposed a final monetary penalty.
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New Mexico’s attorneys are asking the court to apply the maximum $5,000 civil penalty to each violation. The state will determine how any money awarded is ultimately allocated. The judge has not yet scheduled the penalty hearing.
Cambridge Analytica remains at the center of the case
The New Mexico lawsuit was brought by the state’s attorney general over Facebook’s handling of user information and representations about its privacy protections.
The state’s case centered on the Cambridge Analytica data breach, which became one of the most consequential privacy controversies involving Facebook.
The third-party personality quiz collected information from users and, under the application’s permissions at the time, also obtained information associated with some of their Facebook friends. That data was ultimately provided to Cambridge Analytica and used for political advertising purposes.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said when the trial began September 8 that the state was seeking to establish that Facebook had misrepresented how user information was collected, shared and used. The state sought both financial penalties and measures intended to prevent similar practices in the future.
The lawsuit is separate from the major settlements and proceedings that followed the Cambridge Analytica scandal in other jurisdictions.
Meta disputes the verdict
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, rejected the jury’s findings.
Alex Burgos, a Meta spokesperson, said the company disagreed with the verdict and would continue defending itself against what it characterized as efforts to distort its record.
The company also argued during the trial that the state’s evidence was outdated. Facebook’s lawyers told jurors that New Mexico had five years to gather evidence but had identified only one additional instance of a data breach, according to the Associated Press.
Meta also raised First Amendment arguments during the proceedings, saying it has constitutional rights to manage its platforms and determine how they are operated.
Those arguments did not prevent the jury from finding the company liable on the privacy-related claims that were presented to it.
The verdict is separate from New Mexico’s child-safety case
The privacy verdict is the latest in a series of legal proceedings between New Mexico and Meta, but it is separate from an earlier case involving the safety of children on Facebook and Instagram.
In August, a New Mexico court entered a final judgment requiring Meta to pay $567 million and implement court-supervised changes following a separate two-phase proceeding concerning allegations involving minors. Combined with a $375 million civil penalty imposed by a jury earlier in that case, Meta’s financial exposure in that proceeding reached $942 million.
The earlier case concerned allegations that Meta’s platforms exposed children to risks including exploitation and other harms. It was brought under a different legal theory from the Cambridge Analytica privacy case.
New Mexico’s court system lists the two proceedings separately. The current privacy case is State of New Mexico, et al. v. Facebook, Inc., D-101-CV-2021-00132. The child-safety case is State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms, Inc., D-101-CV-2023-02838.
Keeping the cases separate is important because the verdicts address different allegations and different periods of litigation.
Financial penalty remains unresolved
The immediate consequence of Friday’s verdict is liability, not a final dollar amount.
More than 43 million violations were found by the jury. If the maximum $5,000 penalty were applied to every violation, the theoretical figure would be extremely large, but the final penalty cannot be stated until the judge determines how the law should be applied to the verdict.
New Mexico is also seeking an injunction designed to prevent similar practices in the future.
The case therefore moves into another legal stage rather than ending with the jury’s decision.
The outcome could also face further legal challenges from Meta.
A privacy dispute that began years ago
The verdict arrives years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal forced a broader examination of how social-media companies collect, share and protect personal information.
For users, the New Mexico case centers on a basic question: whether Facebook’s public representations about protecting personal information accurately described what was happening on the platform.
For Meta, the company has argued that its practices and policies evolved over time and that the state’s case relied too heavily on older material.
The jury’s decision now places those competing arguments against a formal finding of liability under New Mexico’s consumer-protection law.
The next significant step will be the court’s determination of penalties and any injunctive relief.
Until that happens, the size of the financial consequence remains unsettled.
Reporting Credit: New Mexico Department of Justice — litigation history, allegations and trial position in the Cambridge Analytica privacy case; New Mexico First Judicial District Court — case status and judicial proceedings; New Mexico Courts — official case identification and trial information; Meta Platforms — company response to the verdict.
