New Mexico judge orders Meta to pay $25 billion over false statements about Facebook users' data

A New Mexico state judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties after a jury found the company made false or deceptive statements to Facebook users, including about how much control they had over their data. The Associated Press reported that Judge Francis Mathew issued the order on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, and that jurors had found Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection law. Meta says it will appeal.

What the court found

According to the Albuquerque Journal, the case rests on a September jury verdict under the state's Unfair Practices Act. Jurors weighed 29 statements by Meta and its leadership and found 26 of them false or deceptive. The statements ran from 2010 to August 2021 and covered topics including removing hate speech and misinformation and users' control over data shared with third parties. The newspaper reports that the jury's instructions allowed a penalty of up to $5,000 per violation, and that the order cites statements by Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

The AP reports that the case is tied to the Cambridge Analytica episode, in which a third-party quiz harvested data from roughly 87 million Facebook profiles, and that jurors rejected the state's claims about statements on removing harmful content, including COVID-19 misinformation. The Albuquerque Journal describes the Cambridge Analytica link as background and does not say the order is limited to it.

How the figure was set

The state had sought $35 billion to $40 billion, and Meta's lawyers argued for no more than about $3.4 billion, the AP says. PPC Land, citing Reuters, reports that the judge found a penalty of more than $219 billion warranted under state law and then reduced it to $25 billion. The AP reports that the money would go to New Mexico's education system, though an appeal would delay any payment and interest accrues in the meantime.

What is unresolved

Meta's chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said the company is confident it will prevail on appeal and that the suit seeks to impose a tax on speech, according to the AP. Meta's lawyers argued the violation-counting method is unconstitutional, PPC Land reports. The sources do not report an appeal having been filed, and they differ on how many statements were assessed (the AP and PPC Land's reporting of the Reuters account give different counts). We have not seen the court's order itself, so the figures above are as reported by these outlets.