Meta's Facebook is headed for a jury trial in July in a Washington, DC data privacy lawsuit that accuses the company of misleading users about how their personal information was shared and protected before the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Judge Robert Okun set the July 12 trial date in District of Columbia Superior Court, and this week he also folded the case into a related lawsuit against Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
Okun set a trial date and would consider whether the Facebook and Zuckerberg cases should be tried together. Days later, he made that call. Per a report from mlex.com, Okun on November 10 consolidated the District's consumer-protection lawsuit against Meta with its similar suit against Zuckerberg and lifted the stay that had been holding the Zuckerberg case back, allowing it to move forward alongside Meta's.
What the District Says Facebook Hid
The District of Columbia brought its original lawsuit against Facebook in 2018, alleging the company failed for years to disclose that user data had been improperly obtained and sold to Cambridge Analytica. The District of Columbia attorney general alleges Facebook misled users about how their personal information was shared and protected before the scandal broke, and the lawsuit further claims Facebook gave users a false impression about who could access their information. The District separately sued Zuckerberg in 2022 over his oversight related to data protection.
Facebook made a bid to end the case before trial, but Okun denied that motion. The judge said a jury should decide whether Facebook's privacy statements and omissions could have misled consumers, and the report attributes to the judge the view that those questions are for the jury to resolve.
Legal Teams and Facebook's Position
Facebook is represented by lawyers from Gibson Dunn, while Zuckerberg's case is also moving forward. Facebook has denied wrongdoing and did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment on the trial date or the consolidation.
A $25 Billion Warning From New Mexico
The DC case is not the only legal front where Meta is facing Cambridge Analytica fallout. A New Mexico jury found in September that Meta misled consumers about the privacy of their data in a separate lawsuit stemming from the same scandal, concluding the company was liable for more than 43 million violations of the state's consumer-protection laws, according to Fortune.
A New Mexico judge then ordered Meta to pay the state $25 billion in damages the following month, a sum New Mexico officials described as one of the largest financial penalties ever imposed on a corporation in US history, the outlet reported. Meta has said it will appeal that judgment and, as in the DC case, has denied wrongdoing.
With the DC trial now set for July and the Zuckerberg and Facebook cases moving forward together, a jury in the nation's capital will ultimately have to weigh the same core question New Mexico jurors already answered against Meta: whether the company's promises about protecting user data matched what was actually happening behind the scenes.
