Overview
- A Santa Fe jury returned its verdict on Friday, Sept. 25, finding Meta Platforms misled New Mexico residents in a case tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
- Jurors concluded 26 of 29 company statements were misleading and identified more than 43 million violations of the state’s consumer protection law.
- Judge Francis Mathew must now set civil penalties and the state says it will seek the statutory maximum of $5,000 per violation while also asking for corrective orders and audits of Meta’s data practices.
- Meta disputed the verdict, saying it will continue to defend itself, denying that it sells user data, and arguing the state relied on outdated evidence.
- The case rests on a 2013–2016 data scrape that affected roughly 87 million Facebook profiles and New Mexico pursued the claim separately after a multistate settlement largely released Meta from Cambridge Analytica liability, making the outcome a possible precedent and likely target for appeal.