Judge Francis J. Mathew of New Mexico's First Judicial District issued an order on October 21st requiring Meta Platforms to pay the state $25 billion after a September jury found the company liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act. The case stemmed from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook user data to generate targeted political advertisements during the 2016 US election season.

In his ruling, the judge was unsparing: "Facebook promised users that they controlled their data. This was false," he wrote, adding that the deception "goes to the heart of Facebook's core business practices" and was broadcast to the public systematically over years. He also named senior company leadership, including the CEO and former COO, as having personally misrepresented the platform's data practices. The $25 billion figure — while far below the theoretical maximum of $219 billion calculated from the per-violation statutory ceiling — is five times the $5 billion FTC fine imposed over the same scandal in 2019, and is described by the state's attorney general as potentially the largest state verdict against a company in American history.

All proceeds are earmarked for New Mexico's public education fund, and the state is also pursuing an injunction to stop similar conduct. Meta's chief legal officer said the company is confident it will prevail on appeal, and analysts noted that the penalty, though historically large, represents roughly 2.5 times a single quarter of Meta's net income for a company worth nearly $2 trillion. New Mexico had pursued the case independently after declining to join a broader multistate settlement.