New Mexico is seeking between $35 billion and $40 billion in penalties from Meta following a jury verdict tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The state’s request is far below the theoretical maximum enabled by the verdict, but it would still represent an enormous consumer-protection penalty if the judge adopts it.

The case, filed by New Mexico in 2021, centers on allegations that Meta misled users about its data-privacy practices. It also concerns statements about privacy and the company’s handling of misinformation. The jury sided with the state in late September, finding violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act.

That verdict did not itself set the final dollar figure. The immediate question before the court is the appropriate penalty, with the state and Meta presenting radically different views of what the evidence and the law justify. A decision is expected later this month.

A vast gap between the state’s request and Meta’s proposed cap

New Mexico has asked the court to impose penalties in the $35 billion-to-$40 billion range. The state’s attorney, Randi McGinn, has argued that the result needs to be substantial enough to affect Meta in a meaningful way. Her position is that a penalty must be large enough to deter conduct by a company of Meta’s scale, rather than operate as a cost that can be absorbed without changing incentives.

“This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price,” McGinn said.

Meta has asked for a very different outcome: a $3.45 billion cap. Its central argument is that New Mexico did not prove any of its residents were actually misled by the statements at issue.

The difference matters in more than headline terms. New Mexico’s requested maximum is more than eleven times Meta’s proposed cap. Both numbers are enormous, but they reflect competing legal theories about what must be shown in a consumer-protection case and how a court should translate alleged misconduct into a penalty.

What the jury found

Jurors reviewed 29 Meta statements connected to the issues in the lawsuit and found that 26 were misleading. The statements concerned user privacy and misinformation handling. Based on the number of New Mexico Facebook users who received those statements, jurors found 43 million violations of the state’s consumer-protection law.

That 43 million figure is especially important because it explains how the penalty exposure reaches a scale that might otherwise appear startling. The case is not being framed around one statement, one user, or one event. The verdict treated the communications as potentially separate violations across the relevant audience.

Under the jury’s findings, New Mexico could seek as much as $219 billion. The state’s current $35 billion-to-$40 billion request is therefore not the legal maximum implied by the verdict. It is a lower amount that the state believes is sufficiently consequential and capable of surviving review if Meta challenges the ruling.

Verdict, penalty request and final judgment are not the same thing

It is useful to separate three stages that can easily blur together in a case with numbers this large:

  • The jury verdict: The jury determined that Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act and found specific statements misleading.
  • The penalty request: New Mexico is asking the judge for $35 billion to $40 billion; Meta is requesting a $3.45 billion cap.
  • The court’s decision: The judge has not yet selected a final amount. That decision is expected later this month.

In other words, Meta has not been ordered to pay $40 billion at this point. That is the upper end of the state’s requested range, not the judgment already entered by the court.

The Cambridge Analytica connection

The case stems from the wider Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge Analytica was a British political data firm that harvested information from more than 50 million Facebook profiles without consent for political advertising campaigns.

The issue at the heart of New Mexico’s lawsuit is not merely that data was collected. The state alleges a mismatch between what Meta told people about privacy and how data practices operated in reality. That distinction is central to an unfair-practices claim: the state’s case focuses on allegedly misleading representations to consumers.

Data privacy, in this context, refers to how personal information is collected, accessed, handled and disclosed. For users, privacy statements often function as a promise about what will happen to their information and what control they have. When a state argues that those statements are misleading, it is arguing that consumers were given an inaccurate picture of those choices and protections.

The jury also found Meta misled New Mexico residents in statements involving misinformation. The supplied verdict details do not establish a broader final legal finding about every aspect of Meta’s misinformation policies. They do establish that the jury deemed the particular statements it assessed to be misleading under the state’s consumer-protection framework.

Why the number of violations is so consequential

The phrase statutory penalty describes a monetary sanction authorized by law. In a consumer-protection case, the total can depend heavily on how a violation is counted. A court might be asked to consider each misleading statement, each recipient of a statement, or a combination of communication and audience exposure, depending on the claim and the governing statute.

Here, the jury’s 43 million violations were based on the number of New Mexico Facebook users who were the audience for the misleading statements. That counting method is the engine behind the $219 billion maximum New Mexico could pursue under the verdict.

Meta’s requested $3.45 billion ceiling highlights a different emphasis. The company argues that the state failed to show that New Mexico residents actually were misled. The dispute is therefore not only over arithmetic. It goes to whether the jury’s findings should translate into a penalty assessed across the full volume of alleged violations and, if so, how aggressively the court should use that authority.

For consumers, this is a reminder that legal challenges over platform privacy can turn on public-facing language as much as backend systems. Privacy notices, policy explanations and statements about data use may seem like distant fine print, but they can become central evidence when governments contend that users were given the wrong impression.

What happens next

The next step is the judge’s ruling on the penalty amount. The outcome could land anywhere within the bounds the court considers legally appropriate; the current positions range from Meta’s requested $3.45 billion cap to New Mexico’s $35 billion-to-$40 billion request, while the verdict permits the state to seek a much larger maximum.

McGinn has said she believes the requested amount could withstand review in the Court of Appeals if Meta contests it. That does not mean an appeal has already resolved the case. It means the state is openly accounting for the possibility of further litigation when arguing for an amount it believes can be defended.

The case also illustrates a broader practical reality of tech regulation: jury findings can establish liability, while the most contentious fight may still be the remedy. The size of a penalty is often where deterrence, proportionality, legal standards and the parties’ competing readings of the evidence meet.

That wider policy question extends beyond social platforms. Consumer protections and enforcement mechanisms are also relevant to other technology rules, including the debate around California’s balcony solar law and the limited availability of certified plug-in equipment. The products and legal questions differ, but both show why the details of consumer-facing claims, compliance standards and remedies matter.

What this ruling does and does not establish

The jury verdict establishes that jurors found Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act and that 26 of 29 examined statements were misleading. It also supplies the foundation for New Mexico’s calculation of 43 million violations and its ability to seek a maximum of $219 billion.

It does not mean a $219 billion payment has been ordered. It does not mean the $35 billion-to-$40 billion request is guaranteed. And it does not mean Meta has accepted the state’s interpretation of the evidence; the company is seeking a substantially lower cap and maintains that New Mexico did not establish actual deception of residents.

For now, the headline figure to watch is not a payment already made, but the judge’s forthcoming decision. It will determine whether New Mexico’s effort to impose a penalty designed to materially affect Meta succeeds, or whether the court adopts a much lower limit closer to the company’s position.