Meta Platforms Inc. was ordered to pay the state of New Mexico a $25 billion civil penalty Wednesday, one of the largest verdicts in US legal history in a case spurred by the decade-old Cambridge Analytica scandal.

A jury in Santa Fe determined that Meta had violated the state’s consumer protection laws over 43 million times. The verdict was based on dozens of widely viewed statements made by the company and its top executives about how it handled hate speech and user data, including data given to Cambridge Analytica that was used to target voters for Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 election.

The award to a single state far surpasses the entirety of Meta’s $18 billion settlement reached this summer with the majority of the country’s attorneys general resolving all their pending claims related to youth social media harm and addiction.

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In his ruling, Judge Francis Mathew awarded the highest possible penalty under New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act of $5,000 per violation, which amounts to a shocking $219 billion when multiplied by the number of violations. But the judge reduced that number to $25 billion. The state sought an award of between $35 billion and $40 billion.

“The clearly intentional and systemic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements” supports that award, Mathew wrote.

“Facebook’s wrongdoing—over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public—goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” he said.

Meta’s Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said in a statement Wednesday that “we are confident we will prevail on appeal.”

“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,” Mahoney said. “At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online.”

Meta shares gained less than 1% in regular New York trading Wednesday to close at $697.52. The stock added about 2% in extended trading after the company boosted its outlook for capital spending this year and gave an upbeat fourth-quarter sales forecast as part of a regular earnings report.

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The penalty award is well above the New Mexico’s typical revenue for a year — in fiscal 2028, the state is projected to bring in $14.8 billion of general-fund revenue. The state is already doing well financially, and has increased its revenue forecasts. The $25 billion penalty will accrue a 15% interest rate annually until the full award has been paid.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez (D) said at a press conference that the penalty is “one of the single largest, if not the largest, single-state verdict against a company in American history.”

“This judgment should be a signal, an unambiguous message to anyone in Silicon Valley and beyond that New Mexico will stand strong and go to court,” he said.

Cambridge analytica settlements

The two-week trial in the First Judicial District Court of New Mexico centered on claims by the state that Meta had lied to Facebook users about its privacy policies on how it handled their data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica leak almost a decade ago.

The attorney general also advanced claims that the company deceived the public about content moderation decisions and its hate speech policies, pointing to evidence that certain high-profile accounts weren’t subject to the same scrutiny as ordinary users.

Jurors saw video deposition testimony from Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Meta has been willing to pay large sums to settle cases related to the Cambridge Analytica leak.

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The Menlo Park, Calif., company paid out $5 billion to settle with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019, and inked a $725 million settlement in 2022 to resolve a consumer class action. Meta paid $459 million in an agreement this summer to resolve cases from 46 states and two territories.

But New Mexico has been an especially costly thorn in the side of Meta, opting out of state AG coalitions prosecuting the company and instead going at it alone.

The penalty award for New Mexico comes months after the state became the first in the nation to win a jury verdict against Meta over claims that Facebook and Instagram harm teen mental health and foster child sexual exploitation.

That trial from earlier this year saw a $375 million civil penalty followed by an additional $567 million payment Meta must make to the state to set up programs to combat the youth mental health crisis.

The case is State of New Mexico v. Facebook Inc., N.M. Dist. Ct., No. D-101-CV-202100132, 10/21/26.