A New Mexico jury has found that Facebook violated the state's Unfair Practices Act nearly 44 million times through deceptive statements about user privacy, The Record reported Monday. Each violation carries a civil penalty of up to $5,000, putting Meta's potential liability in the billions of dollars; a judge will set the final amount in the coming weeks.

What Happened

The jury found that Meta willfully deceived consumers on several fronts. They included its claims that users controlled how their data was shared, its statements that it did not buy or sell users' private information to advertisers, its assurances about removing hate speech and misinformation, and its claims that it strictly enforced its community standards.

Jurors also found that Facebook misled the public about its response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. After that episode, the company had promised to investigate third-party apps, including by conducting forensic audits, cutting ties with developers that misused data and notifying affected users; the jury found it did not honor those commitments.

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Attorney General Raúl Torrez said Facebook had acted for years as if the rules that bind everyone else did not apply to it, and called the outcome a "historic verdict." Meta did not immediately comment, according to The Record.

Why It Matters

The per-violation structure of New Mexico's consumer-protection law is what makes the verdict large. At the $5,000 maximum, 44 million violations would amount to roughly $220 billion, far beyond any penalty Meta has paid. The judge can set a far lower figure. For scale, Facebook's 2019 privacy settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, long the benchmark for privacy penalties in the U.S., was $5 billion.

The verdict also matters for its subject. Much of the recent state litigation against Meta has focused on child safety. This case goes to the core promises Meta makes to all adult users about how their data is handled and sold, and a jury has now found those promises deceptive under state law.

A Run of State Cases

New Mexico has already won once against Meta this year. In March 2026, a court there ordered the company to pay $942 million in a separate case over children's online safety. In August 2026, Meta settled a California kids' safety case for $17 billion and agreed to change its platforms.

Those outcomes show state attorneys general using consumer-protection statutes, rather than federal privacy law, to extract large payments and product changes from Meta. Congress has not passed a comprehensive federal privacy law, which leaves state statutes like New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act as a principal enforcement tool.

What to Watch

The immediate next step is the judge's penalty ruling. New Mexico is also asking for sweeping changes to Facebook's data privacy practices going forward, which could reshape how the company describes its data sharing to users in the state. Meta has not said whether it will appeal, and a challenge could delay any payment.