Meta Ordered to Pay New Mexico $25 Billion in Consumer Deception Case

Meta Ordered to Pay New Mexico $25 Billion in Consumer Deception Case

A New Mexico judge entered judgment against Meta on October 21, 2026, imposing a civil penalty of $219.5 billion under the state Unfair Practices Act and reducing it to $25 billion. The liability is for misrepresentations to consumers, and injunctive relief remains undecided.

Information last verified on October 23, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers a single New Mexico state court judgment under the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act, NMSA 1978, Sections 57-12-1 et seq. It does not address federal privacy law, the private class actions arising from the same events, or the separate New Mexico case about minors on Meta's platforms. For the standing state-law backdrop, see how New Mexico regulates personal data.

What Happened

On October 21, 2026 at 10:51 AM, Judge Francis J. Mathew of the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe County filed Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Judgment in State of New Mexico, ex rel. Raúl Torrez, Attorney General v. Meta Platforms, Inc., f/k/a Facebook, Inc., No. D-101-CV-2021-00132. The jury had found that Meta committed 43,899,720 willful violations of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act by unfair or deceptive trade practices, and 5 willful violations by unconscionable trade practices, for a total of 43,899,725 willful violations (Findings of Fact 3). Applying the Act's maximum civil penalty of $5,000 per violation, the court calculated $219,498,600,000.00. The decree awards that sum and then reduces it to $25,000,000,000.00, sets interest at fifteen percent per annum, and reserves on injunctive relief.

The decree itself is three paragraphs. The first reads:

"The State is awarded and shall recover a civil penalty against Meta in the amount of $219,498,600,000.00, which penalty is reduced to the amount of $25,000,000,000.00."

The order supplies no stated reason for that reduction. It is a single sentence, and the 19 Conclusions of Law preceding it do not identify a calculation, a ratio or a capping principle that produces $25 billion.

How 26 statements became 43.9 million violations

The number that drives everything is not a count of injuries. It is a count of audience. Findings of Fact 14 records that, on the court's instructions, the jury determined for each representation how many New Mexicans were part of its reasonably expected or anticipated audience, and then assigned either 1,386,648 or 2,100,000 violations to that representation. Those two figures come from Findings of Fact 7: Facebook had 1,386,648 New Mexico monthly active users as of June 30, 2020, and roughly 2,100,000 people live in New Mexico in total, which the court treated as the expected audience for Facebook's public representations.

The 26 representations the jury found violative and willful span more than eleven years, from May 24, 2010 through August 18, 2021 (Findings of Fact 8). They were not confined to one statement, speaker, medium or part of the business: the court found they were disseminated through Facebook's own platform and Newsroom, earnings calls, nationally distributed television interviews, print and online media interviews, and public conferences (Findings of Fact 9), and that some were made personally by Mark Zuckerberg and then-Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg (Findings of Fact 10).

The five subject areas

Conclusions of Law 9 records that the jury returned separate willful unconscionable-practice findings in each of five subject areas submitted to it, on Questions 30 through 34. The findings of fact walk through those areas, and the representation counts within them add up to the 26: six on user control of data, ten on friend sharing and the App Developer Investigation, two on misinformation, five on hate speech and three on equal treatment.

User control of data. Six representations about users' control of their own data, third-party access and monetization were found unfair or deceptive and willful, amounting to 10,459,944 separate violations (Findings of Fact 16). The court found Facebook's privacy settings did not give users meaningful control, quoting expert testimony that the audience drop-down menus have "no bearing on what developers can pull from your profile" because developer access runs through "a totally separate set of Facebook privacy settings that studies have regularly shown most users have no idea those exist" (Findings of Fact 18).

Friend sharing and the App Developer Investigation. Ten statements about Friends Data access and the App Developer Investigation, submitted as Questions 20 through 29, were each found unlawful and willful, totalling 18,146,592 violations, and the jury separately found an unconscionable trade practice on Question 34 (Findings of Fact 21). The court found that Facebook announced in 2014 that it was ending "friend sharing" while having planned for more than a year to exempt favored business partners, and did not disclose those exemptions despite promising that "everyone" would be subject to the restricted permissions (Findings of Fact 23 through 25).

On the investigation Facebook promised after March 2018, the findings are specific. Over the entire three-year App Developer Investigation, Facebook conducted only 14 forensic data audits, and the auditor expressly disclaimed independent verification, writing that "more detailed procedures may reveal issues that this engagement has not" (Findings of Fact 29). On deletion, an internal document acknowledged that "there is no reasonable enforcement/verification approach" and that the policy goal was in part "to optimize for external optics" (Findings of Fact 31). On notification, Facebook told users about only two applications, while its own investigation identified at least 2,000 unique apps associated with data misuse that would have triggered notice but for a narrowed internal definition of misuse (Findings of Fact 32 and 33). Of those, 1,585 applications could be associated with New Mexico accounts and affected the data of at least 1,146,225 New Mexican users, more than 80 percent of the 2020 New Mexico monthly active user base (Findings of Fact 34). Facebook shut the investigation down in March 2021 without telling consumers, and a corporate representative testified that "as far as the public is concerned, nobody else remembers the ADI" (Findings of Fact 36).

Misinformation and hate speech. Two representations on misinformation and five on hate speech were found unlawful and willful (Findings of Fact 37). The court found internal research documented substantial limitations in Facebook's detection systems and that the systems could be seen promoting the content, including a test-user study in which Facebook recommended groups and pages containing known misinformation (Findings of Fact 38).

Equal treatment. All three representations about equal application of the Community Standards were found unlawful and willful (Findings of Fact 45). The findings describe the CrossCheck or XCheck system, under which content from business partners, celebrities and influencers could remain publicly accessible during additional review while ordinary accounts had violating content taken down immediately (Findings of Fact 46 and 47). The head of the Integrity division wrote in a May 31, 2020 document that "today we effectively delay enforcement for policy-violating content for xcheck as it remains up and accrues VPVs while we take another look / do outreach / prepare comms" (Findings of Fact 49). The court found Facebook never disclosed the extent or impact of XCheck in its public statements about hate speech and misinformation (Findings of Fact 42).

Deterrence, scale and the FTC comparison

Meta argued proportionality by pointing to its FTC settlement and the $5 billion civil penalty it agreed to pay. The court answered that the settlement "cannot be viewed in a vacuum" and that any consideration of it must include the FTC's docket, the original complaint, the consent agreement and the subsequent litigation over violations of those agreements, citing Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, 723 F.Supp.3d 64 (D.D.C. 2024) and Facebook, Inc., No. 092 3184 (F.T.C. 2011) (Findings of Fact 5). It then made the finding that frames the whole penalty analysis:

"Penalties, consent agreements and decrees have not deterred Meta from using deceptive trade practices in its representations to the citizens of New Mexico in violation of New Mexico's Act." (Findings of Fact 6)

On scale, the court recorded from Meta's 2025 Form 10-K that the company had gross revenues of $200,966,000,000 and total stockholders' equity of $217,243,000,000 (Findings of Fact 59), and in its conclusions described a business worth approximately $1.7 trillion in 2025 (Conclusions of Law 12).

Conclusions of Law 18 states that the extraordinary number of willful violations, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership, the size of the New Mexico audiences reached, and the clearly intentional and systematic nature of the repeated misstatements support "the highest level of penalty allowed by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act," which the same sentence identifies as $5,000 per violation found by the jury. Conclusions of Law 19 records a thirteen-day jury trial and repeats the court's post-verdict observation that Facebook "had all the incentive that was required to defend this case vigorously" and "did defend vigorously."

What the Law Actually Says

The statute is the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act, NMSA 1978, Sections 57-12-1 et seq. Its definitions provision traces to Laws 1967, Chapter 268, Section 2, and the civil penalty provision to Laws 1970, Chapter 38, Section 2. It is a consumer-protection statute, not a privacy statute. Nothing in it regulates how a company collects, stores or transfers personal data. What it regulates is what a company tells people.

The penalty provision. Section 57-12-11 is the one the court applied. Its current text, reproduced here from the bracketed strike language of a 2025 amendment bill that shows the existing wording, reads:

"CIVIL PENALTY. In any action brought under Section 49-15-7 NMSA 1953, if the court finds that a person is willfully using or has willfully used a method, act or practice declared unlawful by the Unfair Practices Act, the attorney general, upon petition to the court, may recover on behalf of the state of New Mexico a civil penalty of not exceeding five thousand dollars ($5,000) per violation."

Two features of that sentence are doing the work here. The first is "per violation," with no aggregate cap and no statutory ceiling on how many violations a single course of conduct can generate. The second is "willfully": the penalty is unavailable without a willfulness finding, which the jury made on every one of the 26 representations. The cross-reference to "Section 49-15-7 NMSA 1953" is a stale compilation number that the 2025 bill would have corrected to Section 57-12-8 NMSA 1978, the attorney general's enforcement provision.

What counts as a violation. Section 57-12-2(D) defines an "unfair or deceptive trade practice" as an act specifically declared unlawful pursuant to the Act, or a false or misleading oral or written statement, visual description or other representation of any kind knowingly made in connection with the sale, lease, rental or loan of goods or services or in the extension of credit or in the collection of debts by a person in the regular course of the person's trade or commerce, that may, tends to or does deceive or mislead any person. The subsection then lists specific examples, including representing that goods or services have characteristics, benefits or approval they do not have, but the list is illustrative rather than exhaustive.

Section 57-12-2(E) defines an "unconscionable trade practice" as an act or practice in connection with the sale, lease, rental or loan of goods or services, the extension of credit or the collection of debts that, to a person's detriment, either takes advantage of the lack of knowledge, ability, experience or capacity of a person to a grossly unfair degree, or results in a gross disparity between the value received by a person and the price paid. The first subsection is a deception test. The second is an exploitation test, and it is the one the five additional willful findings rest on.

The $5,000 figure is current law. House Bill 61 in the 2025 regular session would have raised the cap to ten thousand dollars ($10,000) per violation, with an additional amount up to twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) per violation for practices arising out of a declared disaster or state of emergency. The legislature's bill record shows its current location as "Died (API.)," meaning action postponed indefinitely, after a House Judiciary Committee do-pass report on March 6, 2025. The $5,000 maximum the court applied therefore remains the ceiling.

Remedial construction. Conclusions of Law 4 holds that the Act is remedial legislation to protect New Mexico citizens against unfair, deceptive and fraudulent practices in commerce, and the order quotes Quynh Truong v. Allstate Insurance Co., 2010-NMSC-009, paragraph 30, for the proposition that New Mexico courts interpret the Act's provisions liberally to accomplish its purposes. Conclusions of Law 11 adds Salas v. Guadalupe Credit Union, 2025-NMSC-006, paragraph 54, for the same rule, and Atherton v. Gopin, 2015-NMCA-003, paragraph 56, for the proposition that a penalty should take into consideration the purpose of the Act plus the enormity and nature of the wrong and any aggravating circumstances.

The constitutional analysis. The order addresses excessiveness in two steps. Conclusions of Law 6 states flatly that "The United States Supreme Court has not held that the Eighth Amendment applies to corporations," citing Browning-Ferris Industries of Vermont, Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U.S. 257, 276 n. 22 (1989). Conclusions of Law 11 then applies the due-process standard from St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway Co. v. Williams, 251 U.S. 63, 66 (1919), under which a state's prescribed penalty transcends the constitutional limitation "only where the penalty prescribed is so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportionated to the offense and obviously unreasonable." The order states there is no bright-line rule and that courts make a case-by-case determination based on the severity of the underlying conduct. Conclusions of Law 17 closes the loop with a quotation the court draws from United States ex rel. Bassan v. Omnicare, Inc., No. 15 CIV. 4179 (CM), 2025 WL 1865202, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. July 7, 2025), itself quoting Stop Illinois Health Care Fraud, LLC v. Sayeed, 100 F.4th 899, 907 (7th Cir. 2024):

"penalties that fall squarely within the boundaries set by [the legislature] deserve a strong presumption of constitutionality, because the statutory range reflects the considered legislative judgment as to what is excessive."

Interest. Decree paragraph 2 sets interest at fifteen percent (15%) per annum until paid in full and cites nothing. New Mexico's judgment-interest provision, NMSA 1978, Section 56-8-4(A)(2), set interest at fifteen percent where a judgment is based on tortious conduct, bad faith or intentional or willful acts, as that section was reproduced in 2012 Senate Bill 216. We could not reach the current NMSA compilation to confirm the section has not been amended since. We report the rate as the decree states it; the order does not identify its statutory basis, and we have not matched the two in the record.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The most useful thing about this judgment is how little novel law it required. No privacy statute was applied at all. New Mexico's own privacy obligations sit mainly in breach notification duties and attorney general enforcement rather than in a rights-and-obligations regime, and none of that was the vehicle here. The lever was a consumer-protection statute whose definitions date to 1967 and whose penalty provision dates to 1970, and which is about lying to customers. Everything that made the number large came from two ordinary features of that statute: a per-violation penalty with no aggregate cap, and a willfulness enhancement that was met.

The second thing worth sitting with is the counting rule. Findings of Fact 14 makes the violation unit the member of the reasonably anticipated audience, not the injured consumer. Under that rule a statement made once on an earnings call becomes 1,386,648 violations because that many New Mexicans were on Facebook, and 26 such statements become 43.9 million. No finding in the order quantifies what any individual New Mexican lost. The arithmetic is a function of reach. That is a design choice available to any legislature that writes "per violation" into a penalty statute and any court that lets audience define the denominator, and it is the part of this judgment most likely to be litigated hardest on review.

Third, the reduction is genuinely unexplained within the four corners of the document. The court sets out the full proportionality apparatus, including the deference principle from Bassan and Sayeed and the "wholly disproportionated" standard from Williams, and then states the $25 billion figure in the same sentence as the $219.5 billion one without connecting them. It is possible to read the Conclusions of Law as the justification for the larger number and the decree as a separate exercise of discretion, but the order does not say so. A reviewing court will have the same four corners we do.

Fourth, the case is not finished. Decree paragraph 3 reserves on injunctive relief pending further briefing. In a consumer-protection action about what a company told the public, the injunction is where any change to conduct would live, and it remains open. Meta's chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said in a statement reported by the Associated Press that "We are confident we will prevail on appeal." We take no view on that, and nothing here should be read as a forecast of how an appeal resolves.

Finally, the superlatives. Plaintiffs' co-counsel describes the judgment as the largest commercial judgment in United States history and the violations as the largest number ever found by an American jury under a consumer protection law. Attorney General Raúl Torrez, quoted by the Associated Press, said "This judgment should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley." The first two are a party's characterization of its own win. We have not verified them against an independent register of United States judgments, and we do not adopt them. What the record supports without qualification is narrower and sufficient: the order states a willful-violation count of 43,899,725 and a computed penalty of $219,498,600,000.00 before reduction.

The broader pattern is familiar from other enforcement against the same company: the multistate attorney general resolution over teen safety and the regulatory attention to its camera glasses both turn on the gap between what a product is said to do and what it does. The New Mexico judgment prices that gap using a general consumer-protection statute rather than a privacy-specific one, which is why it is portable. Unfair and deceptive trade practices statutes are a standard feature of state law, and wherever one measures its penalty per violation and allows an audience-based count, the same arithmetic is available to that state's attorney general without any new legislation.

How This Affects You

If you are a New Mexico Facebook user, this judgment does not pay you anything and does not open a claims process. Decree paragraph 1 awards the penalty to the State. There is no fund, no claim form, no deadline and no portal associated with it, and any site telling you otherwise is not describing this order. Separately from this case, the Unfair Practices Act does provide damages and other remedial relief to persons damaged by unfair, deceptive and unconscionable trade practices through Sections 57-12-3 and 57-12-10, which the court noted in Conclusions of Law 4, but that is a private action with its own requirements and is not what was decided here.

If you are assessing exposure for a business that makes public claims about a product, the transferable point is the counting rule, not the headline. A statement repeated across channels is not one violation in a state whose penalty provision runs per violation and whose courts let audience size define the count. The willfulness finding is what unlocked the maximum here, and the order's recital of internal communications showing that staff and executives knew the public claims were not accurate is what supported it.

If you are reading about this because you want to know what New Mexico law requires of companies handling your information, that is a different body of law. The state's obligations around personal data, including what must be disclosed after a breach and the narrow rules that touch identifiers derived from your body, are not what the jury decided, and this judgment does not change them.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers a single judgment under New Mexico state law, NMSA 1978, Sections 57-12-1 et seq., entered in the First Judicial District Court for Santa Fe County, and reflects sources verified on October 23, 2026. Laws change, this story is developing, and post-judgment proceedings in this case are open. Consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• How New Mexico regulates personal data
• Breach notice duties for companies holding New Mexicans' information
• The multistate attorney general resolution with Meta over teen safety
• Privacy questions raised by Meta's camera glasses
• New Mexico's rules on biometric identifiers

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Last updated: 2026-10-23. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-23.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much was Meta ordered to pay New Mexico?

The October 21, 2026 decree awards the State a civil penalty of $219,498,600,000.00 against Meta Platforms, Inc., and then reduces that penalty to $25,000,000,000.00. Interest accrues at fifteen percent per annum until paid in full. The judgment runs to the State of New Mexico, not to individual users.

Why was the penalty reduced from $219.5 billion to $25 billion?

The order does not say. Decree paragraph 1 states the $219,498,600,000.00 award and that it "is reduced to the amount of $25,000,000,000.00" in the same sentence, with no stated calculation or rationale. Conclusions of Law 10 through 19 set out the court's proportionality and due-process framework, but the order does not tie the $25 billion figure to any step in it.

How did 26 statements become almost 44 million violations?

Findings of Fact 14 explains the arithmetic: on the court's instructions the jury determined, for each representation, the number of New Mexicans in its reasonably expected or anticipated audience, and assigned either 1,386,648 violations (Facebook's New Mexico monthly active users as of June 30, 2020) or 2,100,000 (the state's approximate total population). Multiplied across 26 willful representations, that produced 43,899,720 deceptive-practice violations.

What law did Meta actually violate?

The New Mexico Unfair Practices Act, NMSA 1978, Sections 57-12-1 et seq. The jury found unfair or deceptive trade practices under Section 57-12-2(D) and, in five instances, unconscionable trade practices under Section 57-12-2(E). The penalty comes from Section 57-12-11, which lets the attorney general recover a civil penalty not exceeding five thousand dollars ($5,000) per violation where a court finds willful use of a practice the Act declares unlawful.

Is this the Cambridge Analytica case?

Cambridge Analytica is part of the factual backdrop but not the legal theory. Findings of Fact 26 through 36 concern what Facebook publicly promised after the March 2018 revelations and what its App Developer Investigation actually did. The liability found by the jury was for misrepresentations to New Mexico consumers, not for the data transfer itself.

Will Meta appeal the New Mexico judgment?

Meta has signaled it will contest the judgment. Associated Press coverage published October 21, 2026 quotes Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney saying "We are confident we will prevail on appeal." As of October 23, 2026 we have not been able to open a notice of appeal on the docket, and we take no position on how an appeal would come out.

Can New Mexico Facebook users file a claim for part of the $25 billion?

No. Nothing in the order creates a claims process, a settlement fund or a payout to individual users. Decree paragraph 1 awards the penalty to the State. Separately, the Unfair Practices Act provides damages and other remedial relief to persons damaged by unfair, deceptive or unconscionable trade practices through Sections 57-12-3 and 57-12-10, as the court noted in Conclusions of Law 4, but that is a different proceeding from this one.

Is the case over now that judgment has been entered?

No. Decree paragraph 3 states: "The Court will reserve on injunctive relief pending further briefing in this matter." The conduct remedy, meaning what Meta may be ordered to change rather than pay, has not been decided. That is in addition to any post-trial motions or appeal.

Why is the interest rate fifteen percent?

Decree paragraph 2 sets interest at fifteen percent (15%) per annum until paid in full without citing a statute. New Mexico's judgment-interest provision, NMSA 1978, Section 56-8-4(A)(2), provides that where a judgment is based on tortious conduct, bad faith or intentional or willful acts, "interest shall be computed at the rate of fifteen percent." We report the rate as the decree states it; the order itself does not identify its basis.

How does this compare to the FTC's $5 billion penalty against Facebook?

Meta raised that comparison and the court rejected it as a benchmark. Findings of Fact 5 records that Meta pointed to the FTC settlement and the $5 billion civil penalty it agreed to pay, and the court responded that "the settlement cannot be viewed in a vacuum" and must be read with the FTC docket, citing Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, 723 F.Supp.3d 64 (D.D.C. 2024) and Facebook, Inc., No. 092 3184 (F.T.C. 2011).