Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META) said Wednesday it will appeal a judge’s order requiring $25 billion in payments to New Mexico for deceiving Facebook users about privacy, saying it is “confident we will prevail on appeal.”
C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, said the judgment and the attorney general’s enforcement strategy make doing business in New Mexico “all but impossible.” He called the suit a tax on speech aimed at writing new rules for online expression, according to a report. Coverage does not say what Meta will change in its privacy practices. The judgment sets 15% annual interest until Meta pays and includes no provisions on pausing it or posting a bond, according to a report on its text.
Judge Francis Mathew of Santa Fe issued the order. A jury ruled in September that Meta had misled users on privacy, counting more than 43 million violations of the state’s consumer protection law. The case centers on a third-party quiz app that gathered data on about 87 million Facebook profiles and passed it to Cambridge Analytica. Mathew said the communications reflected a “coherent strategy designed to mislead the public.”
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Meta’s lawyers argued at trial that the state never proved anyone suffered harm and urged a penalty of no more than $3.4 billion.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez called the award among the largest state verdicts ever won against a company. The state constitution sends consumer-protection fines to education spending, though an appeal could lock up the money. The judge has put the state’s request for an injunction against similar practices on hold pending more briefing.
New Mexico alone went to trial after 48 other states settled, and the state has beaten Meta twice before this year.
Read: Meta Could Pull Instagram, Facebook From New Mexico Over Age Verification Rules
A March jury verdict in a separate child-safety case cost Meta $375 million. In April, Meta warned in court filings that the state’s demands in that case might push it to pull its apps from the state. A judge added $567 million in August, and Meta asked the court to let it put up a $1.8 billion bond that would stop collection of the $942 million total during an appeal. The state did not oppose the bond, but on October 5 it opposed Meta’s post-judgment motions seeking a new trial or judgment as a matter of law.
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