A New Mexico court has ordered Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, to pay $25 billion in civil penalties in a privacy case tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to a court filing reported by CNBC.
The order follows a jury verdict in September that found Facebook made deceptive statements to New Mexico consumers about how it safeguards user data and how it responded when that data was misused. Jurors found more than 43 million violations — precisely 43,899,725 — of the state’s Unfair Practices Act. Each violation could carry a penalty of up to $5,000, which produced a theoretical maximum above $219 billion before the judge set the final penalty at $25 billion.
A scandal that will not end
The case grows out of revelations that data from as many as 87 million Facebook users was obtained through a third-party personality quiz app and passed to Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy linked to the 2016 U.S. election. New Mexico’s lawsuit went further than the original data harvesting: it examined what Facebook later told users about privacy controls and third-party apps, and whether the company carried out the investigation it promised. The state said jurors found Facebook’s statements about that investigation wilfully deceptive.
District Court Judge Francis Mathew wrote that the extraordinary number of wilful violations, their duration, and the involvement of senior Facebook leadership supported the highest level of penalty under the state law. Interest on the penalty accrues at 15% a year until it is paid.
What it means for Meta — and for users
Meta previously agreed to pay $725 million in 2022 to settle a related class-action lawsuit. New Mexico chose not to join a broader settlement with other states and took its case to trial instead — a gamble that has now produced one of the largest privacy penalties in history. The $25 billion is a court order, not money Meta has already paid, and the company can be expected to challenge it; an appeal could take years.
For ordinary users, the case is a reminder of why the Cambridge Analytica scandal still matters nearly a decade later: it was never only about one app, but about what the world’s largest social network told the public while its data practices were under scrutiny.
Sources: CNBC reporting on the October 2026 court filing; New Mexico Department of Justice statements on the September jury verdict.