Artem Voloskovets
The ruling follows a jury finding of 43,899,725 violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act. Meta is expected to appeal.
$25 billion from 43.9 million violations
| Metric | Detail |
| Violations | 43,899,725 |
| Misleading statements | 26 of 29 |
| Maximum penalty per violation | $5,000 |
| Theoretical maximum | ~$219.5 billion |
| State request | $35–40 billion |
| Meta request | $3.45 billion |
| Final penalty | $25 billion |
The final amount equals roughly $569 per violation.
Privacy disclosures drove the verdict
The case focused on Facebook's statements about privacy, third-party access to personal data and its response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Jurors found misleading claims involving:
- access to user data;
- sharing of personal information;
- oversight of third-party apps;
- misinformation and hate-speech enforcement.
The jury found 26 of 29 challenged statements misleading.
Facebook's wrongdoing … goes to the heart of Facebook's core business practices Judge Francis Mathew wrote.
The statutory ceiling was $219.5 billion
At the maximum allowed under the law:
43,899,725 × $5,000 = about $219.5 billion
New Mexico sought $35–40 billion. Meta argued for a cap of $3.45 billion. The court set the penalty at $25 billion.
Five times the 2019 FTC fine
| Case | Amount |
| FTC privacy settlement, 2019 | $5 billion |
| Cambridge Analytica class action, 2022 | $725 million |
| New Mexico youth-safety case, 2026 | $942 million |
| New Mexico privacy case, 2026 | $25 billion |
The new penalty is 5× larger than Meta's 2019 FTC privacy settlement.
The final amount may still change
The money would go to New Mexico's public school system rather than directly to Facebook users.
Meta disputes the ruling and is expected to appeal. $25 billion is the current judgment, not necessarily the final amount the company will pay.
Artem Voloskovets
