New Mexico has asked a judge to impose between $35 billion and $40 billion in penalties on Meta Platforms after a jury found the company misled consumers about Facebook’s data privacy. The request came during a hearing on Thursday in a lawsuit tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The lawsuit stems from revelations that the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users without their consent. The case, filed by New Mexico in 2021, accused Meta of deceiving Facebook users in the state about who accessed their data, how the company managed hate speech and misinformation, and other internal policies.
On September 25, a jury returned a verdict finding Meta responsible for more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. The jurors examined 29 statements made by the company and its leadership concerning data access and content policies, concluding that 26 of those statements were misleading.
Judge Francis Mathew, who presided over the trial in Santa Fe, has authority under state law to fine Meta up to $5,000 per violation. Attorneys for New Mexico argued that applying the full penalty to every violation would be excessive under the US Constitution’s due process protections. Still, Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, told the court the penalty must be large enough to impact Meta’s stock price. She suggested a fine between $35 billion and $40 billion, which represents about 20% of the maximum possible penalties under state law.
“This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price,” McGinn said.
Meta’s lawyers pushed back, calling the state’s demand “an astronomical penalty that would obviously violate a host of constitutional provisions.” The company asked the judge to cap fines at $3.45 billion. In court filings, Meta said the jury’s verdict did not prove any consumer was actually misled and emphasized that the company does not sell user data.
“Well, when the parties go to trial, they roll the dice,” Judge Mathew said during the hearing. “They have to accept the consequences of their decision to go to trial, do they not?”
Meta’s defense also argued that the statements in question were selectively chosen snippets and that the company had acknowledged its handling of misinformation and privacy issues was not perfect.
The judge is expected to issue a ruling on the penalty amount later this month.
The case underscores ongoing legal scrutiny of Meta’s handling of user data and content moderation, following fallout from Cambridge Analytica and other controversies. The amount sought by New Mexico would be among the largest penalties imposed on a tech company for consumer protection violations.
According to Joy Online.
