A jury in Santa Fe is weighing whether Facebook misled New Mexico users about the handling of their personal information in a case arising from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. New Mexico declined to resolve its claims through a multistate settlement and is asking jurors to determine whether the company violated the state's consumer-protection law, how many violations occurred and whether those violations were willful.
The Only State Left in the Fight
New Mexico is the only state currently taking its Cambridge Analytica-related claims against Meta to trial, after 48 other states signed a multistate settlement with the company in August that released Meta from further liability tied to the scandal, according to The Guardian. Attorney General Raúl Torrez declined to join the agreement and pursued New Mexico's claims in Santa Fe state court. Florida also initially opposed the 130-page deal but did not proceed to its own trial, the report said. The agreement was described by The Guardian as an $18 billion settlement, while Hoodline's earlier report characterized Meta's payment as $16.68 billion. The deal primarily concerned youth-safety claims, but its release provisions also covered the Cambridge Analytica-related claims New Mexico chose to preserve.
During opening statements, New Mexico state attorney Randi McGinn told jurors that Cambridge Analytica used harvested Facebook profile data during the 2016 election to target Democratic voters with voter-suppression messages such as “Hillary's got it, you don't need to vote,” The Guardian reported. According to KOAT, McGinn also told jurors that Facebook “moved fast and broke things.” Targeted advertisements built from that data were sent to both Republicans supporting Donald Trump and Democrats in Democratic-leaning states, per KOAT's account of the proceedings. Cambridge Analytica acquired the harvested data to generate those targeted political ads during the 2016 election, the Guardian's reporting notes.
350,000 Exposed, 2.1 Million Claimed Harmed
The New Mexico Department of Justice estimates that roughly 350,000 state residents had their personal profile data directly exposed in the breach, though state attorneys argue the company's deceptive practices harmed more than two million New Mexicans, the Guardian reported. That gap between the number of residents whose data was actually exposed and the much larger population the state says was harmed by deceptive practices is a central tension prosecutors will have to bridge for jurors over the course of the trial.
New Mexico has built its case around the state's Unfair Practices Act. Under Section 57-12-11 of that law, the state Attorney General can recover civil penalties of up to $5,000 per willful violation from entities engaging in deceptive trade practices, according to Justia Law. The jury will need to decide how many violations of that act Facebook committed, per KOAT, as well as whether the company's public statements about its data practices matched what it was actually doing behind the scenes.
Third Trial, Nearly a Billion Dollars Already on the Books
This is New Mexico's third state court proceeding against Meta in 2026. It follows a March jury verdict in Santa Fe that ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties for misrepresenting youth mental health risks, according to Kiowa County Press, and a jury found Meta liable under that same consumer protection statute in that case. In August, First Judicial District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a youth mental health abatement fund after declaring the platform's design a public nuisance, according to Courthouse News Service. Biedscheid reportedly likened Meta's engagement algorithms to factory pollution spilling into the community. Combined, those two prior rulings brought Meta's state trial liabilities in New Mexico to $942 million even before the Cambridge Analytica case went to trial.
State prosecutors plan to present video depositions from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, along with testimony from corporate propaganda experts, over the course of the expected four-week trial, according to Anadolu Agency. The underlying lawsuit was originally filed in 2021 and alleges long-standing consumer deception by the company, per that same report.
Facebook's Defense: The Case Is Incomplete
Facebook attorney Dane Butswinkas argued that the state's case was incomplete, according to KOAT, and said the company had not promised users that its platform was flawless. The defense has pointed to steps Facebook took after the scandal, including suspending 125,000 apps that misused user information, expanding app reviews, removing unused third-party permissions and creating data-abuse programs, KOAT reported. Facebook also reached a settlement with the professor whose research firm, Global Science Research, obtained data from about 270,000 people and their friends through a personality-quiz app; the agreement required the parties to delete information covered by the settlement. If Meta is found liable, a judge rather than the jury will determine the penalty.
How This Fits the Broader Data Privacy Record
The Santa Fe case is part of a broader record of government and private actions involving Facebook's handling of third-party access to user data. The Federal Trade Commission announced a $5 billion penalty and new privacy restrictions against Facebook in 2019. Separately, the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice stipulated in 2020 to a judgment tied to violations of a 2012 FTC administrative order, according to the Justice Department. In February 2025, the Ninth Circuit upheld a $725 million private class-action settlement resolving nationwide Facebook privacy claims tied to Cambridge Analytica, according to Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP. That settlement became effective in May and was described as the largest private data-privacy settlement in U.S. history. New Mexico's case is distinct: it asks a state jury to decide liability under New Mexico law rather than relying on those federal or nationwide resolutions.
What Federal Enforcement Left for New Mexico
The federal record includes both punishment and prospective oversight. The FTC says it imposed the 2019 Facebook penalty alongside sweeping privacy restrictions, while its separate Cambridge Analytica matter involved an administrative complaint and proposed settlements with the company's former chief executive and an app developer over alleged deceptive harvesting of Facebook users' information, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Those actions addressed Facebook's privacy practices and separately pursued alleged conduct connected to the data-harvesting operation, but they did not eliminate New Mexico's state-law case. The Santa Fe jury is therefore considering the state's allegations and potential civil penalties under the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act, rather than revisiting the terms of the federal or private settlements.
