A New Mexico court has ordered Meta to pay an additional $567 million in a landmark child safety lawsuit, bringing the total financial penalty to $942 million. The ruling concluded that Meta's platforms constitute a public nuisance that significantly contributes to harm affecting teenagers.
The case was brought by New Mexico's attorney general, Raúl Torrez, and represents the first jury trial to hold Meta liable for the actions and content on its platforms. A jury initially found the company liable in March, ordering $375 million in civil penalties after determining Meta had misled consumers about platform safety and enabled harms including child sexual exploitation. The second phase of the trial, which concluded with the additional $567 million judgment, was a bench trial focused on what reforms Meta should be required to implement.
The lawsuit was filed in December 2023, following a Guardian investigation that documented how Facebook and Instagram had become marketplaces for child sex trafficking. That investigation was cited multiple times in the original complaint.
New Mexico's attorney general's office has proposed several court-ordered reforms to protect children on Meta's platforms. These include implementing effective age verification systems to prevent adults from posing as minors, ensuring all teenage users receive appropriate safety protections, and enforcing minimum age requirements. The state also seeks safer recommendation algorithms that prioritize child wellbeing over engagement metrics, prominent warning labels about platform risks, permanent bans for adults engaged in child exploitation, and restrictions on end-to-end encryption for minors to prevent predators from operating covertly.
The reforms would be overseen and enforced by an independent court-appointed child safety monitor. Attorney General Torrez stated his office is exploring qualified independent technical monitors from across the country to fill this role.
Meta has strongly resisted these requirements, arguing they are technologically and practically infeasible. In court filings, the company threatened it would have no choice but to withdraw Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from New Mexico entirely rather than comply with what it called "onerous" mandates. Meta argued that building separate versions of Teen Accounts for New Mexico would be excessively costly and challenging.
Torrez dismissed Meta's withdrawal threat as a "PR stunt," pointing out that the company has repeatedly modified its products and adapted to demands from various governments to maintain market access. He argued that Meta possesses the capability to implement these changes but refuses to prioritize child safety over engagement and advertising revenue.
A Meta spokesperson countered that focusing enforcement on a single platform represents a misguided strategy that ignores the hundreds of other apps teenagers use daily. The company also contended that requiring these changes infringes on parental rights and free expression for all New Mexicans.