Meta was ordered Wednesday to pay $25 billion in fines by a New Mexico court in a data privacy case stemming from the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal nearly a decade ago.
The penalty, revealed in a court filing, comes after a jury at a Santa Fe courthouse in September found the social media giant liable for misleading citizens about how it protects and collects user data and prevents harmful information from thriving on its services.
Although the jury found that Meta had committed more than 43 million violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act, with each transgression carrying a civil penalty of up to $5,000, a New Mexico judge was responsible for determining the final fine. Wednesday’s filing showed the state received $219.5 billion, but the fine was ultimately reduced to $25 billion.
“The extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of the topics on which the violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook executives, the size of the New Mexico audiences reached, and the clearly intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated inaccuracies established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty permitted by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act – $5,000 per violation found by the jury,” the jury wrote. New Mexico District Court Judge Francis Mathew in the filing.
The judge added that interest on the fine will accrue at the rate of 15% each year until the fine is paid in full.
CNBC reached out to Meta for comment on the penalty order.
Meta previously resolved various data privacy lawsuits derived from Cambridge Analytica across the country as part of a nearly $17 billion overall settlement in August with a coalition of state attorneys general in a separate federal case related to child safety and mental health. But because New Mexico was not part of the settlement, the state’s data privacy case stemming from Meta’s Cambridge Analytica scandal went to trial in September.
In 2022, the social media giant agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that also stemmed from the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal that began in 2018. That scandal rocked the Mark Zuckerberg-led company before its official name change to Meta and focused on allegations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed the information of 87 million users, raising questions on Facebook’s data processing practices.
Judge Mathew said in the filing that “Facebook failed to conduct the thorough investigation it promised” following the Cambridge Analytica revelations.
“Pressure from senior management to keep costs low, lack of adequate enforcement resources, inadequate investigative techniques, and a desire not to set a precedent for future investigations,” all contributed to what the judge called a “deliberately ineffective” internal review by Facebook, the filing says.
Former New Mexico State Attorney General Hector Balderas initially filed a lawsuit against Cambridge Analytica in 2021, while current Attorney General Raúl Torrez oversaw the related lawsuit.
Torrez also led his state’s child safety lawsuit against Meta, which resulted in a jury decision in March that the social media company should pay $375 million for violating the state’s unfair practices law. A New Mexico judge would later order Meta to pay $567 million to an abatement fund as part of a second phase of the case that determined the social media company’s actions created a public nuisance.
Meta said she disagrees with New Mexico’s decision and plans to appeal.
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