New Mexico Wants Up To $40B From Meta In Penalties

What New Mexico Asked The Judge For

On Thursday 1 October 2026, New Mexico's Department of Justice asked District Judge Francis Mathew in Santa Fe to order Meta to pay $35 billion to $40 billion in civil penalties for lying to users for more than a decade about how Facebook handled their personal information. The case was filed in 2021 and follows the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.

The ceiling comes from the jury. Violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act carry up to $5,000 each, and the jury found 26 misleading statements over an 11-year period and about 43 million violations. Counsel Randi McGinn asked the court to apply the maximum per violation and then use its discretion to cut the total to $35 billion to $40 billion, in line with due process and limits on excessive fines.

McGinn told the court the amount would serve deterrence for any large company that lies to New Mexicans, and Engadget quotes her saying the court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, money and its stock price. She also asked for pre- and post-judgment interest that would keep accruing during any appeal.

How Meta Is Fighting The Number

Meta's attorney Matthew Nicholson called such an award surreal, shocking to the conscience, unconstitutional and grossly disproportionate to the harm in the case. He argued that the Unfair Practices Act exists to promote fair markets, and that tens of billions in penalties would chill businesses and drive them out of the state.

Nicholson proposed a lower fine per violation applied to fewer violations. He noted that the jury set the count in some categories by multiplying by the number of New Mexico residents, while he said the penalty should be applied only to the number of actual Facebook users in the state.

Engadget reports that Meta asked the court to cap penalties at $3.45 billion, arguing the state could not prove any resident was actually misled by its statements. Pluribus News carries the same cap. Measured against $35 billion to $40 billion, that is a gap of roughly ten to twelve times, our arithmetic from the two figures.

A Third Courtroom Win In One Year

The penalty hearing follows two earlier results for the state this year. The Santa Fe New Mexican says New Mexico became the first state to win a trial against a major social media company when a jury found Meta had exposed underage users to sexual predators and misled consumers about the risks.

In that earlier case, filed in 2023, a jury ordered $375 million in penalties and Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered a further $567 million to abate harm after finding Meta's platforms contributed to a youth mental health crisis. All three cases rest on the same state consumer-protection statute.

Judge Mathew did not rule. He extended the deadline for written briefs to Tuesday and said he intends to have something for the parties two weeks after that, which Engadget summarises as a decision later this month. Attorney General Raul Torrez said at a news conference that the verdict could in theory mean about $219 billion.

What This Means For Platform Liability

The case turns a company's public statements into the unit of liability. Twenty-six statements over 11 years produced 43 million violations because the count follows the audience, so exposure scales with reach, not with proven harm. That is exactly the point Meta is contesting.

Any business that makes public promises about privacy, safety or data handling to US consumers should read its own privacy page, ads and help-centre text as potential evidence under state consumer-protection acts with per-violation penalties. The practical control is accuracy and a record of who approved each claim.

None of the reports compares this with EU or UK rules, so we draw no parallel here. The ruling expected within weeks will show whether a court accepts a multiplier by residents and where constitutional limits cut it. McGinn says the figure would survive an appeal, and Meta says it is unconstitutional, so an appeal is the likely next stage.

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