A jury ruled Tuesday against Meta in a major New Mexico trial after the state’s attorney general alleged that the company failed to safeguard its family of apps from child predators.
The civil trial, in which opening arguments began on Feb. 9 in a Santa Fe courthouse, centers on allegations that Meta violated state consumer protections laws and misled residents about the safety of apps like Facebook and Instagram. New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez sued Meta in 2023 following an undercover operation involving the creation of a fake social media profile of a 13-year-old girl that he previously told CNBC “was simply inundated with images and targeted solicitations” from child abusers.
Deliberations began Monday, and jurors were tasked with ruling in favor or against the defendant Meta. Jury members found that Meta willfully violated the state’s unfair practices act. The jury ruled that Meta did so by willfully engaging in an unconscionable trade practice.
The jury ultimately decided that Meta should pay $375 million in damages based on the number of violations
Linda Singer, an attorney representing New Mexico, urged jury members during closing statements on Monday to impose a civil penalty against Meta that could top $2 billion.
“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal,” a Meta spokesperson said. “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.”
Meta has denied the state of New Mexico’s allegations and previously said that it is “focused on demonstrating our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”
“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,” Torrez said in a statement. “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.”
When the New Mexico trial’s second phase, conducted without a jury, commences on May 4, a judge will determine whether Meta created a public nuisance and should fund public programs intended to address the alleged harms. The state’s lawyers are also urging Meta to implement changes to its apps and operations, including “enacting effective age verification, removing predators from the platform, and protecting minors from encrypted communications that shield bad actors.”
During the trial, New Mexico prosecutors revealed legal filings detailing internal messages from Meta employees discussing how Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 announcement to make Facebook Messenger end-to-end encrypted by default would impact the ability to disclose to law enforcement some 7.5 million child sexual abuse material reports.
In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday before the verdict was revealed, Torrez discussed Meta’s argument during the trial that the prosecutors cherry picked certain materials to paint an unfair picture about the social media giant, and that the company has been updating its various apps with safety features.
Although Torrez could not predict the jury’s verdict, he said that he didn’t “think that the jury is going to be convinced that they’ve done as much as they can or should have, and that they should be held responsible for it.”
“One of the things that I am really focused on is how we can change the design features of these products, at least within New Mexico, and that would create a standard that could then be modeled elsewhere in the country, and, frankly, around the world,” Torrez said during the sidelines of the Common Sense Summit held in San Francisco.
Torrez said that a similar child-exploitation related suit involving Snap, filed by his office in 2024, is still in the discovery stages and that his team was “able to overcome section 230 motions” in both the Meta and Snap case. The tech industry has argued that the Section 230 provision of the Communications Decency Act should prevent them from being held liable for content shared on their respective services, resulting in prosecutors testing new legal strategies focusing on the design of the apps instead.
“I also think there’s a distinct possibility that these cases motivate Congress to re-examine section 230 and if not eliminate it, dramatically, revise it,” Torrez said about the various social media cases. “I think juries awarding penalties and holding companies accountable are an important signal to policy makers in DC that there is an urgency in the community that needs to be addressed around these issues.”
Regarding Meta’s criticism that prosecutors are cherry picking certain corporate documents and related materials, Torrez said, “What’s interesting is they accuse us of doing that, but all we’re doing is showing the world what they knew behind closed doors and weren’t willing to tell their users.”
“What I think they really don’t want people to understand is the fact that safety experts inside the company were raising a red flag, and then they were making recommendations about how to implement product changes,” Torrez said. “The company, including Mark Zuckerberg, were forced to choose a side, and they always seem to choose a side of user engagement over safety, and that’s what, fundamentally, this is all about.”
“So it’s not, it’s not cherry picking, it’s just being honest about what the company was doing behind closed doors,” Torrez said.
The New Mexico case is one of multiple social media-related trials taking place this year that experts have compared to the Big Tobacco suits from the 1990s due in part to allegations that the companies misled the public about the safety and potential harms of their products.
Jury members in a separate, personal injury trial involving Meta and Google’s YouTube have been deliberating in a Los Angeles Superior court since last Friday as part of a major trial which the companies are alleged to have misled the public about the safety and design of their respective apps. The LA jury must determine whether one or both of the companies implemented certain design features that contributed to the mental distress of a plaintiff known as K.G.M. who alleged that she became addicted to social media apps when she was underage.
That Los Angeles case is known as a bellwether in that its outcome will help determine verdicts in similar and connected California lawsuits under so-called Judicial Council Coordination Proceedings.
A separate federal trial in the Northern District of California will commence later this year in which multiple school districts and parents across the nation allege that that the actions and apps of Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap caused negative mental-health related harms to teenagers and children.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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