New Mexico Judge Orders Meta to Pay $25bn Over Data Deception

A New Mexico district court judge ordered Meta to pay $25bn (£18.6bn) on Wednesday, capping a two-week trial that found the company spent years misleading the public about how it handled Facebook user data.

The order, issued by District Court Judge Francis J. Mathew and reported October 21, closes a legal fight that began in 2021. The case grew out of Meta's role — when it still operated as Facebook — in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a consulting firm used data from millions of Facebook users for political work, including on the 2016 US presidential election.

Mathew's finding went beyond data handling. The deception, the judge said, reached "the heart of Facebook's core business practices." That language matters more than the dollar figure in some respects: it frames the company's conduct as central to how it operated, not incidental to it.

The $25bn penalty is the largest Meta has faced. The company has also been fined or settled several other cases this year, including an $18bn agreement with California over child safety.

Before the ruling, some outlets reported figures as high as $35bn or $40bn — the amounts New Mexico's lawyers had asked the court to impose. The judge landed below that request.

Meta's head lawyer, CJ Mahoney, said the ruling made it "all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico." He said the company intends to appeal and predicted the appeal would succeed.

That appeal means the outcome is not final. What it does show is that a single state's privacy enforcement can produce a penalty far larger than earlier regulatory fines — and that the legal exposure tied to Cambridge Analytica has not run out.