Facebook Ordered to Pay Close to a Billion Dollars in Court Case with New Mexico AG Office

Santa Fe, NM — Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced that the First Judicial District Court has entered a historic final judgment against Meta Platforms, Inc., one of the most significant rulings ever issued against a social media company, ordering Meta to pay $567 million to address the youth mental health crisis and imposing sweeping, court-supervised reforms to Facebook and Instagram that will remain in effect for five years. Combined with the $375 million civil penalty a jury already imposed against Meta earlier this year, today’s ruling brings the company’s total financial exposure in New Mexico to $942 million.

The judgment follows a two-phase trial before Judge Bryan Biedscheid. In Phase 1, a jury found that Meta committed 75,000 violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act and imposed the maximum civil penalty allowed under law. In Phase 2, the Court went further, ruling that Meta’s platforms constitute a public nuisance in New Mexico and rejecting the company’s claim that Section 230 shielded it from liability for the products it knowingly designed. It is the first time a court has held that a social media company can be sued, tried, and held financially and structurally accountable for building products that endanger children.

“Meta built products it knew would fuel addiction, deepen a youth mental health crisis, and expose children to sexual exploitation, then lied to parents and policymakers about the danger,” said Attorney General Raúl Torrez. “Today, it pays for that choice.”

The Court’s injunctive relief targets the failures exposed at trial. In addition to the financial award, the Court ordered extensive reforms that will remain in effect for five years, including:

• Implementing more rigorous age verification for New Mexico users, including additional measures to accurately identify the age of users within the limits of federal law;
• Maintaining and strengthening protections for Teen Accounts in New Mexico;
• Requiring enhanced protections against sextortion and child sexual exploitation, including stronger safeguards for minors and tougher enforcement against offending adult accounts;
• Preventing minors from sending or receiving nude images that violate Meta’s policies;
• Eliminating push notifications for users under 18 during overnight hours;
• Requiring default privacy protections for minors, including hiding public “like” counts;
• Imposing mandatory time-use limits for users under 18;
• Requiring prominent disclosures about the risks associated with Meta’s platforms;
• Funding a statewide education and public awareness campaign in New Mexico;
• Providing specialized training and resources for New Mexico law enforcement investigating internet crimes against children; and
• Requiring Meta to file semiannual public compliance reports with the Court documenting its progress implementing every aspect of the order.

Notably, the Court stopped short of mandating the kind of hard age-verification requirement the trial record showed was most needed. That was not an oversight. The Court exercised judicial restraint, making clear that sweeping policy choices of that kind belong to the legislative and executive branches, not the courts. Attorney General Torrez says closing that gap is now the job of the Legislature.

“For the first time, a court has ruled that a social media giant can be held liable for building products that endanger children, and has ordered the structural changes needed to fix it,” said Attorney General Torrez. “New Mexico led the way in the courtroom. It is a blueprint other states, and other countries confronting this same crisis, can now follow. But a courtroom win in one state cannot be the only line of defense for children everywhere. Every legislature, and Congress, needs to finish what this Court started.”

Attorney General Torrez announced he intends to close that gap through legislation, starting with a comprehensive social media safety bill in the New Mexico Legislature that would mandate age verification for platforms operating in the state, paired with a broader overhaul of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws to reflect the scale and harm of the modern digital economy. He is also calling on Congress and legislatures nationwide to act. That push already carries bipartisan momentum: red states and blue states alike have enacted age verification laws, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have introduced similar federal legislation, and polling consistently shows this is something the overwhelming majority of Americans, regardless of party, support.

“A courtroom can punish what already happened. Only a law can stop it from happening again,” said Attorney General Torrez. “I will bring a comprehensive social media safety bill to the New Mexico Legislature that puts age verification into law, not just into a court order, and a top-to-bottom overhaul of our consumer protection laws to match the scale of harm the digital economy causes our kids. New Mexico led the way in the courtroom. Now it’s time for our Legislature to lead the way in the Capitol.”