New Mexico Prices Facebook’s Old Privacy Quotes at $25 Billion

A Santa Fe judge on October 21, 2026, ordered Meta Platforms to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found Facebook deceived users about data privacy. First Judicial District Judge Francis J. Mathew priced 26 public statements as tens of millions of Unfair Practices Act hits, then cut the law’s dollar cap to that figure.

The people named in those statements still collect nothing. The bill runs at 15% a year until it is paid, and Meta’s chief legal officer says the company will appeal.

Santa Fe Prices 26 Old Facebook Quotes at $25 Billion

The case is State of New Mexico v. Facebook Inc., No. D-101-CV-2021-00132, filed in January 2021 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. A British political firm had pulled data from as many as 87 million Facebook accounts, including through a quiz app that reached friends who never touched it.

New Mexico did not ask the jury to retry that harvest. It asked whether Facebook’s own words about data, hate speech, and the cleanup were true. Jurors on September 25, 2026, after weeks of testimony, said 26 of 29 statements were misleading.

Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced historic $25 billion civil penalties against Facebook and called the result a warning that size does not put a company beyond state law. Mathew, in a 20-page order, put the same idea in plainer court language.

The harm in this matter is difficult to overstate, and goes to the heart of Facebook’s basic business proposition.

Francis J. Mathew, First Judicial District judge, October 21, 2026 order

He also wrote that Facebook knew users did not understand its privacy settings and took advantage of that to a grossly unfair degree. The order quotes a private Mark Zuckerberg note on a privacy change: “Give them a chance to change their privacy settings but obviously don’t encourage it.”

Mathew found the company kept an internal “song sheet” so officials would say the same thing outside. After Cambridge Analytica, Facebook promised to tell people when apps misused their data. The order says it notified users of just two apps, while apps tied to the misuse touched data from at least 1.1 million New Mexicans.

How 43,899,725 Violations Were Counted

The New Mexico Department of Justice recorded 43,899,725 violations of New Mexico law. That total is 43,899,720 willful unfair or deceptive hits plus five willful unconscionable-practice counts. Jurors treated each of the 26 statements as a hit against Facebook users in the state, and on some counts against residents who never opened an account.

Torrez put the finding in one line after the verdict: “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.”

WHAT THE JURY CALLED DECEPTIVE

• Data control: Statements that people controlled how their information was shared, and that Facebook did not sell or give personal information to advertisers, were found willfully false.
• Hate and lies: Claims that Facebook did not profit from misinformation or hate, removed harmful posts, and did not allow hate speech were found willfully deceptive.
• Even rules: Promises that Community Standards had no special protections and no exceptions for politicians failed the same test.
• The cleanup: Pledges to investigate apps, run forensic audits, ban bad developers, and notify people after Cambridge Analytica were found willfully deceptive.
• Five extra counts: Jurors also found five willful unconscionable trade practices, which the Department of Justice folded into the 43,899,725 total.

Judge Mathew then took the September jury count on the same case and turned a liability sheet into a dollar judgment on October 21. Zuckerberg did not take the stand. Jurors watched about 90 minutes of his taped deposition, set against public lines from him and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

The $219,498,600,000 Ceiling the Judge Cut

New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act lets the attorney general recover, for willful conduct, a civil penalty of not exceeding five thousand dollars per violation. That cap has sat at $5,000 since 1970. Multiply it by the 43,899,720 deceptive-practice hits and the sheet reads $219,498,600,000.

Mathew wrote that the state was entitled to that figure, then cut it in the same judgment to $25 billion. The plaintiff’s firm posted the order showing $219,498,600,000 before the final reduction.

THE MONEY THE JUDGE HAD TO PRICE

Randi McGinn, a lawyer for the state, had told the court to pick a number that would move Meta’s stock, then to come in under the cap so an appeals court would not see a red flag. Meta lawyer Matthew Nicholson argued that a giant fine would break excessive-fines rules, and that the state never showed a New Mexican saw, relied on, or was hurt by the statements.

Schools Collect, Users Do Not

Civil penalties under this law go to the state, not into user accounts. Torrez said the state constitution sends Unfair Practices Act money to school construction and other capital projects. At $25 billion, he joked, New Mexico may have paid for school building for several hundred years.

No Facebook user files a claim on this judgment. The live parties are the attorney general, the school fund, and a company that has not paid. Corban S. Rhodes, who led the DiCello Levitt trial team, said the case asked whether a company of this size could be made to answer for broken promises. Adam J. Levitt, a founding partner at the firm, said other states now have a path to follow.

That path is why a $25 billion line in a small state is being read as more than a local win. It is also why some people hear a shakedown: a 1970 penalty written for car lots and storefront ads, pointed at a social network’s entire in-state audience, produces a bill larger than a year of ordinary state tax take before a judge even uses his discretion.

Meta Calls the Penalty a Tax on Speech

C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, answered the order the same day. He did not argue the quiz app. He argued the Constitution.

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, company statement, October 21, 2026

That speech-tax line is a bad fit for the verdict form. Jurors were not asked to punish posts. They were asked whether Facebook told the truth about who could see user data, whether it sold that data, whether it banned hate, and whether it audited the apps that had already walked off with profiles. The free product still runs on advertising. The finding is that the privacy pitch around that product was willfully false.

Meta had said a penalty in the billions would violate due process and the bar on excessive fines. Those are the issues an appeals court can actually hear. Torrez told reporters he expects the company to appeal, and that a fight could last three or four years.

A $459 Million Exit Left New Mexico Alone

Most other states are not going to retry Cambridge Analytica. Meta paid $459 million to settle similar privacy claims for the states that took a deal, which is why those offices are unlikely to copy this exact case. New Mexico stayed in court and walked out with $25 billion on paper.

The method can still travel. Vincent Joralemon, director of the Life Sciences Law and Policy Center at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, said consumer-protection statutes are becoming the way to reach tech firms that have used speech law as a shield, and that other states can still sue over a different set of public claims.

New Mexico has already used the same statute twice in one year. In a separate child-safety case, a Santa Fe jury in March 2026 set a $375 million civil penalty, and a judge in August added $567 million, a $942 million total on that docket. Torrez now wants lawmakers to rewrite the Unfair Practices Act, which he said was built for an era that no longer exists and whose $5,000 cap has not moved with prices in more than 50 years.

If that rewrite raises the per-hit cap, the next multiplier gets larger. If it stays put, the audience math still does the work. Either way, a privacy policy is no longer only a terms-of-service file. It is a stack of quotable sentences, each one able to be counted against every in-state user who might have heard it.

Fifteen Percent Interest Runs During the Appeal

Mathew held off on an injunction, including the independent monitor the state wants, and set more briefing. Until Meta pays, the judgment adds 15% a year, about $3.75 billion if a full year runs, or about $10.3 million a day.

THE CASE CLOCK

1. January 2021: New Mexico files State of New Mexico v. Facebook Inc. in Santa Fe.
2. September 25, 2026: A jury finds 26 of 29 statements misleading and records 43,899,725 willful Unfair Practices Act violations.
3. October 1, 2026: At a penalty hearing, the state asks for $35 billion to $40 billion and Meta asks for about $3.45 billion.
4. October 21, 2026: Judge Mathew finds $219,498,600,000 warranted, enters a $25 billion judgment, and sets 15% interest until it is paid.

Meta can still try to shrink or wipe out that number on appeal. The jury’s count of the statements is already on the sheet, the $5,000 cap is still in the statute, and the interest clock is already running.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a civil judgment and related public statements. It is for information only and is not legal advice, investment advice, or a prediction of what an appeals court will do. Readers with a claim, a business in New Mexico, or a financial position in Meta Platforms should consult a licensed attorney or a registered financial adviser before acting. Dollar figures, interest, and case status reflect the court order and official statements as published on October 21, 2026, and may change if the judgment is stayed, reduced, or reversed.