The state’s attorney says the penalties should be significant enough to impact the company.
If the state of New Mexico has its way, Meta will have to pay up to $40 billion in penalties after a jury sided with the government in its lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. According to Reuters, state authorities have asked a judge to order the company to pay between $35 billion and $40 billion. If you'll recall, New Mexico filed the lawsuit against Meta in 2021, accusing it of misleading its users about its data privacy practices. Cambridge Analytica, a British political data firm, harvested information from over 50 million Facebook profiles without consent for political ad campaigns.
In late September, a New Mexico jury sided with the state. Jurors ruled that Meta had violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act and had misled residents about their privacy, as well as on how the company handles misinformation. Under the jury's verdict, the state could ask for as much as $219 billion. Yes, that's billion with a B. The jurors had examined 29 statements the company had made on issues involving the case and found 26 of them misleading. Based on the number of Facebook users in New Mexico who were the audience of those statements, the juror had found that Meta had committed 43 million violations of the state's consumer protection laws.
Randi McGinn, the state's attorney, wants the penalties Meta has to pay to be significant enough to have an impact on the company. "This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price," she said. McGinn believes the amount she asked would hold up in the Court of Appeals even if Meta contests it. Meanwhile, Meta is asking the court to cap the penalties at $3.45 billion, arguing that New Mexico wasn't able to prove that any of its residents had actually been misled by its statements. The judge will issue a decision later this month.
