Judge Francis Mathew issued the order on October 21, following a September jury verdict that found 43,899,725 willful violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. The case covers Facebook’s public statements about privacy, data sharing, misinformation and hate speech over more than 11 years.

The judgment is a major legal setback for Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram. However, the $25 billion is a court-ordered penalty, not money the state has already received. Meta has said it will appeal, setting up a potentially lengthy legal fight over the verdict and the size of the award.

How the court reached $25 billion

New Mexico law allows courts to impose a civil penalty of up to $5,000 for each willful violation of the state’s Unfair Practices Act.

Using that maximum for all 43,899,725 violations found by the jury would produce a penalty of about $219.5 billion. Judge Mathew’s order calculated that amount, then reduced the award to $25 billion.

The judge cited several factors supporting a severe penalty. They included the number of violations, the length of time the conduct continued, the range of subjects covered by the statements, the involvement of senior company leadership and the size of the audience reached in New Mexico.

The order also found that earlier penalties and agreements had not deterred the practices at issue in the case. The judge concluded that the company’s statements were not isolated mistakes but part of conduct that the jury found willful.

The final amount is still far below the calculated maximum. The order does not make the $25 billion immediately payable free of further legal challenge. It sets interest at 15% a year until the penalty is paid in full, while the case moves toward the next stage.

What the jury found

The jury’s September verdict covered 26 public representations that it found violated state law. Those statements spanned the period from May 2010 through August 2021.

The findings included statements that users controlled how their personal information was shared and that Facebook did not sell or provide their personal information to advertisers. Jurors also found certain statements about the platform’s handling of misinformation and hate speech to be misleading.

The verdict did not mean that every allegation made by the state was proven. In particular, the jury did not accept every claim about Facebook’s removal of harmful content. The distinction matters because the penalty rests on the violations actually found by the jury, rather than every allegation raised during the case.

The judge’s order followed the jury’s findings and set the civil penalty. A separate question remains: whether the company must also change particular practices under a court injunction. The judge reserved that issue for further briefing rather than resolving it in the October 21 order.

How Cambridge Analytica fits into the case

The lawsuit grew out of the wider controversy over Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that obtained Facebook user data through a third-party personality quiz app. The data was used to build profiles for political advertising, including during the 2016 United States presidential election.

The episode became public in 2018 and raised questions about whether Facebook users understood how their information could be collected and shared beyond the platform. Federal regulators later imposed a $5 billion penalty on Facebook in a separate proceeding related to privacy practices and a previous Federal Trade Commission order.

New Mexico’s case drew on that history, but its claims were broader than the data-harvesting episode alone. The state also challenged Facebook’s public statements about privacy protections, misinformation and hate speech. The jury’s verdict addressed those specific representations under New Mexico law.

That distinction is important. The $25 billion judgment is not a new federal penalty for the entire Cambridge Analytica episode, nor is it the same as earlier settlements involving other states. It is a state court’s civil penalty arising from the violations found in this case.

Meta says it will appeal

Meta has said it disagrees with the judgment and intends to challenge it. Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney argued that the state’s approach threatens free expression and could make it difficult for the company to operate in New Mexico. He said Meta was confident it would prevail on appeal.

The appeal could challenge both the jury’s liability findings and the way the court calculated the penalty. A central legal question is whether the state can count violations based on the number of people who could have encountered public statements, rather than proving that each person saw and relied on a particular statement.

Meta has also argued that the penalty raises constitutional concerns, including whether it is excessive in relation to the conduct established at trial. The state, by contrast, argued that the scale, duration and repeated nature of the statements justified a substantial penalty.

The outcome remains uncertain. An appellate court could uphold the judgment, reduce the penalty, alter parts of the verdict or return issues to the trial court. The size of the award alone does not establish what an appellate court will decide.

As of October 23, no subsequent notice of appeal, stay or amended judgment has been independently confirmed for this report. Meta’s stated intention to appeal should therefore be distinguished from a verified court filing.

Where the money would go

New Mexico’s attorney general has said that money recovered under the judgment would support the state’s education system. The state constitution directs certain fines and penalties into education-related funds, although the precise handling of any eventual payment depends on the applicable legal and budgetary rules.

The timing is uncertain. An appeal could delay payment and keep the funds unavailable while the courts consider Meta’s challenges. The order’s interest provision means the amount owed could also change over time if the judgment remains in force and payment is delayed.

The case is separate from another New Mexico lawsuit over alleged harm to young people using Facebook and Instagram. In that proceeding, a court ordered Meta to pay $942 million and imposed additional protections for children. The two cases involve different claims and legal findings, even though both concern the company’s conduct in the state.

A major penalty, with more legal questions ahead

The $25 billion judgment shows how a state consumer-protection law can produce a large penalty when a jury finds millions of willful violations. But the ultimate financial and legal consequences remain unsettled.

The trial court has entered its penalty order, and the state says the money would benefit education. Meta intends to appeal, while the question of additional court-ordered changes remains open.

The next stage will determine whether the verdict and penalty survive judicial review. Until then, the award remains a significant but contested judgment—not a completed payment and not a final resolution of every issue in the case.

Reporting Credit: New Mexico First Judicial District Court — October 21, 2026, findings, conclusions and penalty order in State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms, Inc. New Mexico Department of Justice — September 25, 2026, jury-verdict announcement and October 21, 2026, penalty announcement. Federal Trade Commission — records of the separate 2019 Facebook privacy settlement.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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