New Mexico asks judge for $35bn to $40bn penalty against Meta after privacy trial

New Mexico asked a state judge on Thursday to order Meta Platforms to pay between $35 billion and $40 billion in civil penalties, after a jury found the company had misled Facebook users about the privacy of their data in a case stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Reuters reported (https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/new-mexico-wants-meta-to-pay-to-usd-40-billion-in-penalties-after-data-privacy-trial-20003574.htm).

Attorneys for the state made the request at a penalty hearing in Santa Fe. The jury returned its verdict on 25 September: jurors examined 29 statements made by Meta and its leadership about data privacy, hate speech and misinformation, found 26 of them misleading, and concluded the company had committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws — based on the number of Facebook users in the state exposed to each misleading statement.

State law allows the judge to fine Meta up to $5,000 per violation. Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, told the court that applying the full amount would be too large under the US Constitution’s due-process protections, but urged a payment big enough to matter: “$35 billion to $40 billion, which represents about 20% of the possible penalties”, saying the court should “speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price.”

Meta’s lawyer, Matt Nicholson, called the request “an astronomical penalty that would obviously violate a host of constitutional provisions”. In court filings Meta urged Judge Francis Mathew to cap penalties at $3.45 billion, arguing the state never proved any consumer was actually misled and that Meta does not sell user data. Mathew, who presided over the trial, pushed back: “Well, when the parties go to trial, they roll the dice. They have to accept the consequences of their decision to go to trial, do they not?” He said he expected to issue a ruling later this month.

The lawsuit was filed in 2021 after revelations that the British consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app without their consent. Engadget reported the jury’s counting method could theoretically support a far larger figure — up to $219 billion at the statutory maximum — but the state asked for roughly a fifth of that.