New Mexico Jury Finds Facebook Liable for Deceiving Users on Privacy; Judge to Set Penalty as State Seeks $5,000 Per Violation

A New Mexico jury on Friday found Facebook liable for deceiving users about privacy protections on the social media platform, according to Courthouse News, which cited the Associated Press. The verdict, returned in Santa Fe, leaves the size of the financial penalty in the hands of a judge, with state attorneys asking for the maximum $5,000 fine allowed per violation under New Mexico's consumer protection law.

What the Jury Decided

Jurors sided with prosecutors on two fronts, Courthouse News reported. They found that Facebook's failure to protect users' data affected New Mexico's entire population of more than two million people. Separately, jurors determined that Facebook misled the public about investigations into data brokers following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, holding the company liable for more than two million individual violations.

The two-week trial centered on accusations that Facebook deceived users about a data breach stemming from a third-party personality quiz that harvested data from roughly 87 million profiles and sold that information to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm whose clients included Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, according to Courthouse News.

During closing arguments, lawyers for Facebook argued the state's evidence was outdated and that despite having five years to gather material, New Mexico had failed to identify more than one other instance of a data breach, Courthouse News reported.

Why New Mexico Was the Only State to Bring This Case

New Mexico ended up the only state able to pursue Cambridge Analytica-related privacy claims because of terms buried inside a much larger settlement, according to Courthouse News. Meta agreed in August to pay up to $18 billion to resolve a multistate lawsuit over child safety issues, and that 130-page settlement also released Meta from future liability tied to the Cambridge Analytica breach. Florida was the only other state that declined to sign the child-safety settlement, saying at the time it was not tough enough on Meta, Courthouse News reported.

Part of a Broader Pattern of Litigation in New Mexico

This privacy verdict follows a separate, high-profile case earlier this year in which New Mexico won judgments totaling $942 million from Meta across a two-phase trial concerning the company's safety protections for minors, Courthouse News reported. As part of that case, a court also ordered Meta to implement new safeguards, including age-verification technology and time limits on its platforms.

The first phase of that earlier case concluded on March 24, 2026, when a Santa Fe jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties — the maximum $5,000 fine per violation — after finding the company misled consumers about platform safety and endangered children, according to reporting from The Guardian and law firm Crowell & Moring. In that trial, the jury found Meta liable on both claims the state brought under New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act and determined the violations were willful, The Guardian and CNBC reported. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called that verdict "a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta's choice to put profits over kids' safety," according to The Guardian and CNBC. A Meta spokesperson responded at the time that "we respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal," CNBC reported. Bottom line: the reported record in New Mexico shows the state pursuing consumer-protection penalties calculated per violation — an interpretation of the cited reporting, not a forecast — which means the size of the privacy penalty now rests on how the judge applies the requested $5,000 maximum to the more than two million violations jurors identified, per Courthouse News.