New Mexico’s Solo Bet Hits Meta With a $25 Billion Penalty

A Santa Fe judge on October 21 ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion for misleading Facebook users about privacy and content rules. The civil penalty follows a September jury finding of 43,899,720 violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act.

Judge Francis J. Mathew added 15% interest a year until the sum is paid, and Meta said it will appeal. New Mexico had refused to join other states in a summer settlement and took the Cambridge Analytica-era case to trial on its own.

A $25 Billion Penalty From a 1970 Consumer Law

Mathew filed a 20-page judgment at 10:51 a.m. in State of New Mexico, ex rel. Raúl Torrez, Attorney General v. Meta Platforms, Inc., case No. D-101-CV-2021-00132. The decretal section first awards $219,498,600,000, the statutory maximum, then cuts that figure to $25 billion in the same sentence.

Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced a historic $25 billion civil penalty and told reporters a small state going alone should be a warning to big tech. He has said consumer-protection recoveries go to New Mexico’s schools, and that the sum could fund school construction for 100 years, while conceding an appeal would tie the money up.

The harm in this matter is difficult to overstate and goes to the heart of Facebook’s basic business proposition. As Facebook admitted at trial, its primary asset is a network of users along with the personal data and content those users generate.

Francis J. Mathew, District Judge, October 21 order

The order does not set a payment date, a bond, or a stay. Injunctive relief is reserved for later briefing. Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney said the company is confident it will win on appeal.

How New Mexico Counted Millions of Violations Per Statement

The Unfair Practices Act, enacted in 1970, lets the attorney general recover up to $5,000 per willful violation on behalf of the state. A Santa Fe jury on September 25 found 26 of 29 public statements by Facebook and its leaders misleading, and sided with the state on 31 of 34 counts.

The court told jurors to count, for each unlawful statement, the New Mexicans in its reasonably expected audience. Facebook had 1,386,648 monthly active users in the state as of June 30, 2020. The larger figure used for some statements was 2,100,000, about the state’s population. Fifteen statements carried the user figure and 11 carried the population figure, which is how the jury reached 43,899,720 unfair or deceptive violations.

The jury also found 5 willful unconscionable-trade-practice counts. Those 5 were treated as aggravating facts, not multiplied into the dollar award, for a total of 43,899,725 findings. Meta attorney Matt Nicholson told the court on October 1 that the jury did not find that any New Mexican heard the statements or was harmed by them. The judgment answers that by adopting the audience standard it had given the jury.

THE PENALTY STACK

Mathew wrote that the number of willful violations, their duration, the involvement of senior leadership, and the size of the audiences supported the highest penalty the Act allows. He then reduced the award to $25 billion without naming a per-violation rate, a percentage cut, or a reason for choosing $25 billion over the state’s $35 billion to $40 billion request or Meta’s $3.4 billion cap. Meta’s lawyers had called a penalty in the tens of billions a constitutional violation of epic proportions.

New Mexico Sat Out Meta’s $18.59 Billion Pact

Then-Attorney General Hector Balderas filed the case in 2021. Torrez took it to trial after other states folded their Cambridge Analytica claims into a broader summer deal. New Mexico stayed out of the multistate teen mental health settlement that Meta later valued at up to $18.59 billion with 52 attorneys general.

That pack is money Meta has already started to book. New Mexico’s order is larger than the entire pact, on paper, and it sits on top of a separate youth-safety fight the state also tried alone. Torrez told reporters the October 21 judgment showed what the state could do by going to court instead of joining a group deal.

The $25 billion is a civil penalty owed to the state. No Facebook user is in line for a check, which is the first thing anyone following the old scandal needs to know. Restitution was never the mechanism. The Act pays the public treasury, and Torrez has pointed that money at schools.

Other states that settled have a deal Meta has begun to account for. New Mexico has a trial-court number, 15% interest, and years of appellate briefing. That is the wager: a smaller, slower, larger recovery against a check that could already be in motion elsewhere.

Zuckerberg, Sandberg and Facebook’s Internal Song Sheet

The two-week trial that opened September 9 walked the jury through five groups of public claims, from 2010 through 2021. Mathew found that Facebook compiled an internal “song sheet” to coordinate what officials said outside the company, and that the communications were part of a coherent strategy designed to mislead the public.

Among the statements the jury found unlawful and willful were remarks by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and then-chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. One line from Sandberg on the January 30, 2019 earnings call, which the jury treated as willfully deceptive, was “We don’t sell your data and we don’t tell advertisers who you are.”

The court recorded that Facebook’s core business is the sale of advertising targeted with users’ personal information, and that users cannot stop the collection or turn the ads off. A witness, Dr. Calum Matheson, said the company sells everything but a user’s name. Privacy menus, another expert told the jury, often have no bearing on what developers can pull through the interface.

THE FIVE STATEMENT BUCKETS

• Data control: Six statements on whether users controlled their information, all found unlawful and willful, for 10,459,944 violations.
• Friends data and the app probe: Ten statements on third-party access and the investigation promised after Cambridge Analytica, for 18,146,592 violations, the largest single bucket.
• Misinformation: Two statements found unlawful and willful.
• Hate speech: Five statements on how Facebook policed abusive content, including the claim that rules applied evenly.
• Community standards: Three statements on equal enforcement, all found unlawful and willful.

The friends-data bucket is the old scandal in statutory form. Cambridge Analytica obtained data on up to 87 million Facebook profiles. Facebook had already paid a $5 billion federal privacy penalty in 2019 and $725 million in 2022 to end a consumer class action. New Mexico priced the leftover public statements per resident instead of taking a share of a national check.

The Youth Case Already Set a $942 Million Tab

The privacy trial is the second Meta case Torrez has won in Santa Fe this year. On March 24 a jury in the youth-safety case found 75,000 Unfair Practices Act violations and set the same $5,000 maximum, producing $375 million. On August 6, Judge Bryan Biedscheid added $567 million for a five-year abatement fund, $420 million of it for treatment, bringing that case to $942 million.

Meta has posted a $1.8 billion bond while it fights those youth rulings and has not paid them. It also warned it could shut down its platforms in New Mexico rather than accept the child-safety overhauls. Torrez called that a refusal to put children ahead of advertising revenue. The October 21 privacy order lands on a company already on the hook in the same courthouse, before the same attorney general, under the same 1970 statute.

NEW MEXICO’S PATH AGAINST META

1. 2019: Facebook agrees to a $5 billion FTC penalty over Cambridge Analytica-era privacy failures.
2. 2021: Then-Attorney General Hector Balderas files the Unfair Practices Act case in Santa Fe.
3. 2022: Meta pays $725 million to end a consumer class action on the same scandal.
4. March 24, 2026: A Santa Fe jury orders $375 million in the separate youth-safety case.
5. August 6, 2026: Judge Bryan Biedscheid orders $567 million for a youth abatement fund.
6. August 2026: Meta agrees with 52 attorneys general on payments of up to $18.59 billion. New Mexico stays out.
7. September 25, 2026: A Santa Fe jury finds 43,899,720 Unfair Practices Act violations in the privacy case.
8. October 21, 2026: Judge Mathew enters the $25 billion judgment with 15% interest.

Torrez has already said the 1970 Act needs a rewrite in the next legislative session, calling it a law designed for an era that no longer exists, even as he used it to produce the largest number on this list.

Fifteen Percent a Year Is Meta’s New Clock

Meta reported third-quarter results on the same day as the judgment. It closed September with $82.45 billion in cash holdings, counting cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. The $25 billion award is less than a third of that pile, and it is smaller than a year of the company’s capital spending, but it is not the bill Meta booked in the quarter.

The earnings release includes a $9.89 billion charge toward the $18.59 billion attorneys-general agreement. It does not treat the Santa Fe privacy judgment as a settled cost. Interest on $25 billion at 15% is $3.75 billion a year, which is larger than the $3.4 billion cap Meta asked Mathew to impose on the whole case. One year on the clock outruns that constitutional ceiling before a single principal payment is made.

META’S SAME-DAY BALANCE SHEET

• Cash pile: $82.45 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of September 30, 2026.
• Pack settlement: Up to $18.59 billion for 52 attorneys general, with a $9.89 billion third-quarter charge.
• New meter: $3.75 billion a year in interest on the New Mexico judgment until it is paid.
• State budget: $14.8 billion in New Mexico general-fund revenue projected for fiscal 2028.

The $25 billion figure is also larger than that $14.8 billion revenue projection. Mahoney’s response was not about accounting. It was about staying in the state at all.

This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico. At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online. We are confident we will prevail on appeal.

C.J. Mahoney, Meta chief legal officer, statement on October 21

If an appeals court buys the speech-tax argument, or trims the audience-count method, the $25 billion shrinks or disappears and the 15% meter stops. If the order stands, New Mexico has extracted more from one privacy case than the company agreed to pay 52 other offices for a broader teen-safety peace, and the interest keeps adding $3.75 billion a year while the briefs are written.

Schools Will Not See This Money Soon

Torrez has said the penalty belongs in the education system. The October 21 document itself does not name a fund, a school district, or a transfer date. Collection terms, a supersedeas bond, and a stay are still unwritten. Meta can ask the New Mexico Court of Appeals to hold the judgment, and a further trip to the state Supreme Court is open.

The youth case already shows the pace. The March $375 million verdict and the August $567 million abatement order remain unpaid while Meta appeals and sits behind a $1.8 billion bond. The privacy judgment is more than 26 times the combined youth tab, with a higher interest rate and no bond language in the text. Schools will wait on that fight, not on a wire from Menlo Park.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The award: $25 billion plus 15% interest, entered October 21 after a jury count of 43,899,720 violations.
• The path: New Mexico filed in 2021, skipped the $18.59 billion pack, and tried the case in Santa Fe.
• The destination Torrez named: education spending, which he said could cover school construction for a century if the money arrives.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Collection: No deadline, bond, or stay is in the judgment, and Meta has said it will appeal.
• Injunctions: The court reserved platform-practice orders for later briefing.
• The cut: The order does not explain why $25 billion, not $35 billion to $40 billion or $3.4 billion, is the number that survives due-process review.

Until a higher court rules, New Mexico holds a $25 billion judgment against Meta and a 15% clock, the product of a bet to try the Cambridge Analytica statements alone. Meta holds its appeal, its cash, and Mahoney’s warning that this kind of enforcement makes the state unworkable. Neither side has collected, or paid, a dollar on this order yet.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a civil court judgment and on company filings. It is informational only and is not legal, investment, or financial advice. A trial-court penalty that a defendant has said it will appeal can be reduced, stayed, or wiped out, and readers should consult a qualified attorney or a licensed financial adviser before acting on any figure in this case. Amounts, interest, and case status reflect the October 21 judgment, Meta’s third-quarter release, and official statements cited here, and they may change.