A New Mexico judge ordered Meta on Oct. 21 to pay $25 billion in civil penalties, but the written judgment gets there by awarding $219,498,600,000 and, in the same sentence, reducing it to $25 billion. It states no method for the cut. Interest accrues at 15% per annum until the penalty is paid in full, and the court reserved on injunctive relief pending further briefing: the penalty is decided, injunctive relief is not.
What did the New Mexico court order Meta to pay?
Judge Francis Mathew of the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe ordered Meta to pay a $25,000,000,000 civil penalty under the state’s Unfair Practices Act, with interest at 15% per annum until paid in full. The judgment first awards $219,498,600,000, which is the $5,000 maximum multiplied by 43,899,720 violations, then reduces that sum to $25 billion without giving a formula. Injunctive relief is reserved, not denied: the court will take further briefing.
What the judgment decides and what it leaves open
| Item | Status | What the judgment says |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum award | Decided | $219,498,600,000 ($5,000 x 43,899,720) |
| Final penalty | Decided | “reduced to the amount of $25,000,000,000.00” |
| Method for the cut | Not stated | No rate, ratio or benchmark in the order |
| Interest | Decided | 15% per annum “until paid in full” |
| Injunctive relief | Open | Reserved “pending further briefing” |
The court’s conclusions say the record supports “the highest level of penalty allowed” by the statute, $5,000 per violation, and the order then lowers the award anyway. By our arithmetic, $25 billion is about $569 per counted violation, or about 11.4% of the amount the court said the state was entitled to.
The parties were far apart. Reuters reported that the state asked for $35 billion to $40 billion, while Meta urged the court in filings to cap penalties at $3.45 billion. At the Oct. 1 hearing, Courthouse News reported, Mathew said he believes due process would call for a much smaller fine than the state asked, comparing the request with the multistate settlement Meta reached in August.
The interest clause matters. By our arithmetic, one year at 15% on $25 billion is $3.75 billion, more than the $3.45 billion cap Meta proposed for the whole penalty. The order says only that interest accrues “at the rate of fifteen percent (15%) per annum until paid in full”, so we do not total it past a year.
What the court found about Meta’s ad business
These are trial-court findings, subject to appeal. In Finding 17 the court found that “Facebook’s core business and primary source of revenue is generated from the sale of advertising to third parties that is targeted at Facebook’s users based on their personal information.” The finding cites testimony from Dr. Calum Matheson that Facebook “sell[s] everything but your name,” and records that Meta’s own witness, Isabella Leone, confirmed the advertising platform requires user data to function and that users can neither stop the collection of their data nor turn off ads. For the product side of that data flow, see Meta’s off-site activity setting and feed personalization.
Finding 9 says the statements the jury found unlawful reached the public through channels including Facebook’s own platform and Newsroom, earnings calls, nationally distributed TV interviews, print and online media interviews, and public conferences. According to the judgment, they span May 24, 2010 through Aug. 18, 2021, and include statements made personally by Mark Zuckerberg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg. The September verdict that counted every New Mexican in a statement’s anticipated audience is covered in our verdict story.
The count in the judgment
Our verdict story relied on ppc.land’s tally of the verdict form. Finding 3 confirms its 43,899,720 figure: the jury found 43,899,720 willful violations by unfair or deceptive practices and 5 by unconscionable practices, 43,899,725 in total. The penalty math uses only the first figure; the five unconscionability findings were not added to the multiplication.
Reactions and what comes next
Meta’s chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said in a statement reported by Source NM: “This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico. At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online. We are confident we will prevail on appeal.” Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement that it was “a historic day for New Mexico and for consumers across the country.”
Injunctive relief stays open pending further briefing. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that interest is expected to accrue while any appeal is pending.
