Meta ordered to pay $25 billion over Cambridge Analytica data privacy

New Mexico District Judge Francis Joseph Mathew ordered Meta $META, the parent company of Facebook, to hand over $25 billion as a penalty over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which gave rise to the state’s data privacy lawsuit, according to CNBC.

The penalty appeared in a court filing on Wednesday. The filing showed an initial award to the state of $219.5 billion, which was then cut down to a final penalty of $25 billion, according to CNBC.

A jury in Santa Fe ruled in September that Meta bore liability for deceiving New Mexicans about its collection and protection of user data and its steps to block harmful content on its platforms. The jury tallied upwards of 43 million breaches under New Mexico's unfair practices act, and each one could draw a civil fine of as much as $5,000. A judge then had to decide how large the final penalty would be.

"The extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership, the size of New Mexico audiences reached, and the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook's repeated misstatements established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty allowed by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act - $5,000 per violation found by the jury," Mathew wrote in the filing, according to CNBC.

New Mexico was left out of an overarching settlement of nearly $17 billion that Meta struck in August with a coalition of state attorneys general in a separate federal case over child safety and mental health, according to CNBC. That settlement also resolved Cambridge Analytica-related data privacy lawsuits elsewhere in the country, so New Mexico’s case went to trial in September.

The scandal began in 2018 and revolved around claims that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, had improperly obtained data on 87 million users. Meta agreed in 2022 to a $725 million payment resolving a class action suit connected to the scandal. Former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas filed the state's lawsuit in 2021, and current Attorney General Raúl Torrez oversaw the trial.

In the state's separate child-safety case, Meta raised the prospect of removing Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp from New Mexico rather than comply with proposed safety measures. A jury in that case ordered Meta to pay $375 million after finding it had broken the state's unfair practices act, and Meta said it would appeal.

A New Mexico judge later directed Meta to contribute $567 million to an abatement fund, concluding that the company's conduct amounted to a public nuisance, according to CNBC. Meta objected to that ruling and said it intends to appeal.