New Mexico Jury Finds Facebook Liable for Deceiving Users Over Cambridge Analytica
Jurors found more than 2 million violations of state law after a two-week trial in Santa Fe, and the state wants the maximum $5,000 penalty for each one. Meta says it will keep fighting.
SANTA FE, N.M. — A New Mexico jury on Friday found Facebook liable for deceiving its users about privacy protections in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a verdict that could expose Meta to one of the largest state privacy penalties ever imposed on a tech company.
The jury found the company liable for more than 2 million violations of state law. It is now up to the judge to set the penalty, and attorneys for the state are asking for the maximum $5,000 per violation. Jurors concluded that Facebook's failure to protect user data affected New Mexico's entire population of more than 2 million people.
The two-week trial centered on a personality quiz app that harvested data from roughly 87 million Facebook profiles and passed it to Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political consulting firm whose clients included Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The data was used to build targeted political ads. Prosecutors argued Facebook knew about the breach, misled users about how their information was being handled, and then misled the public about its investigations into data brokers after the scandal broke in 2018. The jury sided with the state on both counts.
"For years, Facebook operated as if the rules that apply to everyone else didn't apply to them. Today, a jury of New Mexicans said otherwise," Attorney General Raúl Torrez said. "This is a historic verdict, not just for New Mexico, but for every state fighting to hold Big Tech accountable." He added a warning: "If you lie to New Mexicans about how you use their data, we will find out, and we will hold you accountable."
In closing arguments, Facebook's lawyers said the state's evidence was outdated and that, despite five years to build its case, New Mexico had not found more than one other instance of a data breach. A Meta spokesperson said the company disagreed with the verdict and would continue to defend "against efforts to distort our records." The company argued free speech issues "featured very prominently" in the case. "We have a First Amendment right to manage those platforms in a way we believe best serves the interests of our community," the spokesperson said.
New Mexico was the only state left standing on the Cambridge Analytica claims. In August, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle a multistate lawsuit over child safety, and buried in the 130-page agreement was a release from future liability tied to the Cambridge Analytica breach. New Mexico did not sign on; Florida was the only other holdout, saying the deal was not tough enough.
It is the second major courtroom loss for Meta in New Mexico this year. In an earlier two-phase trial over protections for minors, the state won judgments totaling $942 million, and the court ordered Meta to add age-verification technology and time limits on its platforms. Meta already paid $5 billion to the Federal Trade Commission in 2019 over Cambridge Analytica, then a record privacy penalty.
