Nearly eight years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal brought Facebook’s data practices under global scrutiny, New Mexico is taking the company to trial over allegations involving the collection and use of residents’ personal information.
SANTA FE, UNITED STATES — New Mexico has taken Meta Platforms’ Facebook to trial over allegations that the company misled users about how their personal information could be accessed and used by third-party applications, reviving a privacy fight that dates to the Cambridge Analytica scandal of the late 2010s.
Jury selection began September 8 in the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, with opening statements scheduled for September 9. The trial is scheduled to run through October 2, according to the New Mexico courts, although the schedule could change.
New Mexico is seeking civil penalties under the state’s Unfair Practices Act and an injunction intended to prevent similar conduct in the future. The state says the case concerns Facebook’s handling of data obtained through a personality-quiz application and its alleged failure to adequately inform or protect users from third-party access.
The trial comes nearly a decade after the Cambridge Analytica controversy became one of the defining privacy scandals of the social-media era.
What New Mexico alleges
The state’s case centers on allegations that Facebook failed to adequately protect users from an application that collected information from Facebook profiles.
According to the state’s case materials, data associated with approximately 87 million Facebook profiles worldwide was obtained through the application and ultimately provided to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting company. New Mexico says approximately 350,000 New Mexico residents were affected.
The state alleges that Facebook’s representations and practices violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act.
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Attorney General Raúl Torrez said when the trial began that the case concerns more than the exposure of private information. He accused Facebook of misrepresenting how user data was collected, shared and exploited.
Those statements are allegations advanced by the state. The jury will determine the claims based on the evidence presented at trial.
Why the case reaches court nearly a decade later
The New Mexico litigation is not a new lawsuit arising from the 2026 trial. The case is State of New Mexico ex rel. Raúl Torrez v. Facebook Inc., D-101-CV-2021-00132, filed in New Mexico state court in January 2021.
Its survival through years of litigation has become significant because several other legal actions connected to the Cambridge Analytica controversy have moved toward settlements or otherwise taken different paths.
A recent multistate settlement involving Meta included provisions concerning Cambridge Analytica-related claims. New Mexico, however, is not among the states releasing its claims through that agreement, leaving its separate case to proceed.
That makes the Santa Fe proceeding unusual.
While much of the original Cambridge Analytica legal fallout has moved through federal litigation and settlements, New Mexico is now putting its allegations before a state jury.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal
The underlying controversy emerged from Facebook’s relationship with third-party applications and the amount of information those applications could access.
The Cambridge Analytica controversy became public in 2018 after reports detailed how data obtained through a personality-quiz application had been transferred to the political consulting firm.
The episode triggered investigations and regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic and intensified questions about whether social-media platforms adequately understood or controlled the ways outside developers could obtain and exploit user information.
New Mexico’s case is narrower than the entire political and regulatory history surrounding Cambridge Analytica.
The question before the jury is whether Facebook’s conduct violated New Mexico law.
What the state wants from the trial
New Mexico is seeking the maximum civil penalties available under the state’s Unfair Practices Act for each violation that the jury determines occurred. The state is also seeking injunctive relief designed to prevent similar practices involving user information.
The exact financial exposure will depend on how the jury evaluates the evidence and how the applicable statutory penalties are calculated.
The state has argued that the number of affected users is substantial, including hundreds of thousands of New Mexico residents.
The case therefore has potentially significant financial consequences, but its importance extends beyond a monetary judgment.
A ruling against Meta could reinforce the ability of state governments to use consumer-protection statutes to challenge the handling of personal data by large technology platforms.
Meta’s position
Meta has disputed the state’s allegations.
The company has argued that its privacy and data-protection practices have changed substantially since the period at issue and that evidence concerning Facebook’s practices from the Cambridge Analytica era should be evaluated in that historical context.
The distinction is important because the trial concerns conduct associated with an earlier version of Facebook’s platform and its developer ecosystem.
The company now operates under a substantially different corporate structure and regulatory environment than it did when the Cambridge Analytica controversy emerged.
The trial will therefore require the jury to assess evidence concerning past conduct rather than simply judging the company’s present-day policies.
The case is separate from New Mexico’s other Meta trial
The Cambridge Analytica case should not be confused with a separate New Mexico lawsuit against Meta involving children and alleged harms from Facebook and Instagram.
That case, State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms, Inc., D-101-CV-2023-02838, produced a $375 million jury verdict in March 2026 and a subsequent $567 million court-ordered payment and other measures in August, bringing the state’s total financial judgment in that separate case to $942 million.
The two cases address different allegations.
The 2026 Cambridge Analytica trial concerns privacy, data access and alleged violations of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act.
The earlier case concerned allegations involving child safety and the effects of Meta’s platforms on minors.
The distinction matters because the two proceedings could otherwise be incorrectly treated as one continuing lawsuit.
Zuckerberg and other former executives expected to feature
The current trial is expected to include video testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, according to the New Mexico Department of Justice. The state also identified corporate-propaganda experts Calum Matheson and Sam Woolley among its anticipated witnesses.
The witness schedule remains subject to change.
Their testimony could give jurors an opportunity to examine how Facebook’s leadership understood the company’s data practices and its relationship with outside developers during the period relevant to the case.
Why the trial matters beyond New Mexico
The case arrives at a time when governments are increasingly challenging the practices of the largest technology companies through state consumer-protection laws.
For New Mexico, the immediate question is whether Facebook violated state law through its handling and disclosure of user data.
For the wider technology industry, the case illustrates another route through which state governments can pursue accountability: rather than relying exclusively on federal privacy legislation or federal regulators, states can use their own consumer-protection statutes to challenge conduct involving technology platforms.
A verdict could therefore become relevant to future disputes over how companies disclose data practices, supervise third-party developers and communicate privacy risks to consumers.
But the legal significance will depend heavily on the jury’s findings and any subsequent appeals.
A delayed reckoning over digital privacy
The trial also demonstrates how long the legal consequences of a major technology scandal can take to reach a courtroom.
Cambridge Analytica became a global symbol of the risks created when personal information collected for one purpose is used for another. The controversy helped shift privacy from a technical issue discussed largely by specialists into a mainstream political and consumer concern.
New Mexico’s lawsuit now asks a narrower question: whether Facebook’s conduct violated a particular state’s consumer-protection law.
Nearly a decade after the scandal first became public, that question is finally being tested before a jury.
The trial is expected to last about four weeks. For New Mexico, the immediate objective is a judgment over alleged violations involving its residents’ data. For Meta, the proceeding represents another test of how its earlier data practices will be judged under state law.
The outcome could determine not only whether New Mexico wins its case, but also how far state consumer-protection laws can reach when governments challenge the privacy practices of global technology companies.
Reporting Credit: New Mexico Department of Justice, for the state’s trial filings, official statements and description of the allegations and requested remedies; New Mexico Courts, for the official case status, trial schedule and court records; State of New Mexico court filings, for the legal claims and procedural history.
