New Mexico Asks Judge to Order Meta to Pay $35 Billion to $40 Billion After Privacy Verdict

New Mexico wants META to pay up to $40 billion in penalties after a data privacy trial. At a hearing in Santa Fe on Oct. 1, state attorney Randi McGinn asked District Judge Francis Mathew to apply the $5,000 maximum penalty per violation of the Unfair Practices Act, then use his discretion to cut the total to between $35 billion and $40 billion in line with due process and limits on excessive fines, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. A jury found in late September that Meta made 26 misleading statements over an 11-year period about the use, sale and safekeeping of user data, and counted more than 43 million violations. At $5,000 each that implies about $219 billion, so the state framed its ask as a step down, though its attorney said it would still be the largest penalty in the nation's history.

Meta's attorney called the proposed award "grossly disproportionate" and unconstitutional, and suggested a lower per-violation fine applied only to actual Facebook users in the state rather than all residents. The state also asked for pre- and post-judgment interest, which would accrue during any appeal. It is New Mexico's second win over Meta: in a separate 2023 case a jury ordered $375 million and a judge ordered $567 million to address youth mental health harms.

Judge Mathew extended the briefing deadline to Tuesday and said he intends to have "something" about two weeks later. Both cases are likely to be tied up in litigation for years, per the Santa Fe New Mexican, so any payment could be far off. Separately, a Mashable opinion column relayed a New York Times report that Meta's research tax credit savings, tied to treating AI data centers as experimental facilities, grew from $700 million in 2023 to $3.9 billion in 2025; that report involves no legal action.