March 24, 2026, 21:30 GMT | Comment
Meta Platforms violated a New Mexico consumer protection law and should pay a $375 million fine, a jury said Tuesday in handing down the first of what is likely to be many verdicts in courts across the US about the alleged harmful design of social media platforms. The verdict caps a six-week trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A New Mexico jury found Meta Platforms violated state consumer protection law by misleading users about teen safety and designing its platforms in ways that put young users at risk, awarding the state $375 million in civil penalties.
In the first of many challenges by state attorneys general to social media’s business model in both state and federal courts,
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez scored a huge win that could resonate in other states, with the jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico, finding that Meta unlawfully designed and operated
Instagram and other social media services. The jury reached its verdict after just one day of deliberation. Meta said it plans to appeal the verdict.
“The jury’s verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety,” said Torrez. “Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough."
Meta said in a statement just after the verdict that it will appeal. “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online," the company said in a written statement.
The jury determined that Meta had engaged in unfair or deceptive trade practices, and that it acted willfully. It determined based on evidence in the trial that Meta violated the law 37,500 times, and awarded the maximum fine — $5,000 — for each violation. The jury reached a similar determination on the question of whether Meta willfully committed an unconscionable trade practice, doubling the fine.
Beyond the significant fine, that verdict could also force Meta to make changes to how Instagram and other platforms operate in New Mexico. Following the jury verdict, there will also be a bench trial about potential injunctive relief imposed by the state for violating the unfairness claims and a decision by the judge on the nuisance claim.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid, who oversaw the jury trial, decided it would be a bifurcated trial with the jury deciding if Meta was liable for the two Unfair Practices Act counts, and for how many violations of that law the company incurred. In the bench trial, he will decide further injunctive relief, hearing more about how the state has been harmed by Meta.
During the jury trial, New Mexico argued that Meta’s public assurances about teen safety were at odds with the company’s internal research findings, many of which Meta kept secret. The jury decided that conduct was unfair under the state's consumer protection law.
Lawyers for the state told the jurors that Instagram’s recommendation algorithm and engagement-driven design exposed young users to harm. Meta was also accused of failing to fully disclose risks of child exploitation, designing systems that too easily connect users to harmful content networks, enabling what the state described as a breeding ground for child sexual predators.
Lawyers for New Mexico had urged the jury to award a penalty of more than $2 billion, a figure derived from the maximum penalty of $5,000 per violation on each of the two counts of consumer protection violations multiplied by the average number of teenage users — 208,700 — of the application. Meta said it was blindsided by the request, only learning about it this weekend and saying the state “wants cash.”
Linda Singer, a lawyer representing New Mexico, told the jury during closing arguments that Meta's former slogan, “Move Fast and Break Things,” illustrated the company's willingness to sacrifice the safety of young users to inflate its bottom line.
"You heard about Meta's motto, its corporate philosophy, from Brian Boland, one of the one of the early witnesses in this case. And he explained that if something breaks along the way, that's the cost of doing business,” Singer told the jury Monday. "The safety issues that you've heard about in this case weren't mistakes. They weren't quirks. They were a product of a corporate philosophy that chose growth and engagement over children's safety.”
A Meta spokesperson claimed that the state had made “sensationalist, irrelevant arguments by cherry picking select documents,” but the jury didn’t see it that way.
Meta closed its argument with the jurors Monday with Kevin Huff, one of the company’s lawyers, saying New Mexico had failed to adequately prove its allegations.
"The state has to prove to you that Meta intentionally lied about its intentions, but given all of the work that Meta has done to improve safety, and given all the choices that Meta has made to prioritize safety over growth and engagement, we respectfully submit that the state cannot meet its burden of proof,” Huff told the jurors. “There's no witness, there's no document, nothing that contradicts that, strong evidence.”
The verdict comes as a separate coalition of 22 state attorneys general prepares to take Meta,
TikTok,
YouTube and Snap to federal court in August over claims that their platforms were designed to addict young users. That case focuses on compulsive use and mental health harms tied to platform design, rather than allegations tied to child sexual exploitation.
The New Mexico trial played out in parallel to a trial on somewhat similar claims in a California state court in Los Angeles, with that jury having yet to reach a verdict on whether Meta and YouTube were negligent on claims from plaintiff K.G.M. that the platforms substantially contributed to her mental health problems (see
here).
The Santa Fe jury learned only Monday as they began deliberations that their finding of liability would impact a second trial — the bench trial before Biedscheid — about the specific business practice changes Meta might have to make for New Mexico’s 2.1 million residents.
"There are two phases to this trial. That's also something you didn't know until right now,” James Grayson, a lawyer for the
New Mexico Department of Justice, told the jurors.
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