New Mexico’s Meta Lawsuit: $375M Verdict and Remedies Trial

The New Mexico Meta lawsuit is a state enforcement action in which a Santa Fe jury ordered Meta Platforms to pay $375 million in March 2026 for misleading users about the safety of Facebook and Instagram and endangering children on those platforms. It is the first state child-safety case against Meta to reach a jury verdict, and it is not over: a judge is still weighing whether to declare the platforms a public nuisance, order sweeping design changes, and impose additional financial penalties. Meta says it will appeal.

What the State Accused Meta of Doing

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed the case on December 5, 2023, in the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe County. The defendants included Meta Platforms, Instagram LLC, two related subsidiaries, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The case number is D-101-CV-2023-02838.{¹}

The lawsuit grew out of an undercover investigation. Investigators from the Attorney General’s office set up decoy accounts posing as children 14 and younger. According to the state, Meta’s platforms proactively served sexually explicit imagery to those accounts even when the fake users showed no interest in it. Adults were able to contact the child accounts and pressure them for explicit photos. In one scenario, investigators posing as a mother were able to use Meta’s tools to offer a fictitious 13-year-old daughter for sale to sex traffickers. The Attorney General said many images recovered during the investigation were left out of the complaint because they were “too graphic and disturbing.”{²}

The state brought its claims under the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act, arguing Meta engaged in unfair, deceptive, and unconscionable conduct by promoting its platforms as safe while knowingly exposing children to sexual exploitation and mental health harm. A separate count alleged Meta’s conduct created a public nuisance. The complaint accused Meta of designing addictive features such as engagement-based feeds, infinite scroll, push notifications, and auto-play video to maximize the time children spent on its platforms, and of publicly reporting misleadingly low rates of harmful content that internal studies contradicted.{¹}

The complaint was drafted to avoid treating Meta as a publisher of user content. The state disclaimed federal claims and framed the case around Meta’s own design choices and statements rather than what users posted, an approach aimed at sidestepping Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act.

How the $375 Million Verdict Was Reached

The first phase of the trial focused on liability under the Unfair Practices Act. On March 24, 2026, a Santa Fe jury found Meta liable on both counts: misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangering children.{³}

The jury assessed the maximum statutory penalty of $5,000 per violation. It applied that penalty to each of two counts across 37,500 New Mexico users, a figure the state said represented about one-quarter of the state’s teenagers. The math produced the $375 million total.{⁴}

Evidence at trial included internal Meta documents and testimony from former employees, law enforcement, and educators. The state argued the records showed Meta’s own staff and outside child safety experts had repeatedly warned that platform design features enabled predators to find and exploit children, and that Meta had suppressed or modified internal research to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Torrez said the jury concluded Meta “knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew.”{⁵}

Meta asked the court to set the penalty aside. On April 9, 2026, the court denied that request.{³}

The Bench Trial on Remedies

A second phase went forward before First Judicial District Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid. The bench trial covered the state’s public nuisance claim and its request for court-ordered changes and additional financial penalties. It began on May 4, 2026, and ended on May 22, 2026.{⁶}

What New Mexico Is Asking the Court to Order

The state asked the court to declare Meta’s platforms a public nuisance and to impose a package of injunctive remedies:

Deploy age-verification tools, block children under 13, and require every account for a user under 18 to be linked to a parent or guardian.{}⁷
Optimize algorithms for safety over engagement, eliminate infinite scroll, autoplay, and push notifications during school and sleep hours, and set mandatory time limits.{}⁷
Eliminate end-to-end encryption for users under 18 to allow detection of exploitation.{}⁸
Authorize New Mexico law enforcement to run undercover safety testing on Meta’s platforms, and require human review of CyberTipline reports within 48 hours.{}⁷
Install a court-appointed child safety monitor to oversee compliance for at least five years.{}⁷

On money, the state’s expert witnesses estimated the full cost of addressing youth mental health and safety issues statewide at $3.7 billion over 15 years. In its closing submission, the state asked Meta to pay $953 million as its “equitable share” of that abatement cost, with any remaining funds returned to Meta after 15 years.{⁹}

Testimony during the bench trial included a concession from Meta’s Chief Privacy and Compliance Officer, Michel Protti, that the state’s proposed measures, including parental consent for all under-18 users and a daytime block on push notifications, are “technically feasible.” He also acknowledged that after Meta developed compliance plans in response to a prior legal challenge in Arkansas, the company pulled back once the legal pressure eased.{⁶}

Dr. Brian Levine of the UMass Cybersecurity Institute testified that age verification tools already in use, including Yoti (which Meta uses for other services), can achieve 99% accuracy for users aged 6 to 12. Fallon McNulty of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said some law enforcement agencies now refuse to receive Meta’s automated CyberTips because of quality problems, and contrasted Meta’s record with Google, which she said reports over 99% of novel child sexual abuse material. Dr. Zachary Ward of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health testified that one in ten New Mexico youths has a mental health concern attributable to social media, and that 45% of girls with disordered eating and 22% of youths with suicide risk factors would not face those issues absent social media exposure.{⁶}

Meta’s Response

Meta argued the state’s proposals are government overreach that infringes on free speech and parental rights and duplicates safety measures already in place. The company said it had rolled out 13 safety measures over the prior year.{¹⁰}

In a filing made public on April 29, 2026, Meta also warned that the state’s demands are “so broad and burdensome” that they could force the company to withdraw Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from New Mexico entirely, saying it would not make “economic or engineering sense” to build separate applications for a single state.{¹¹} Torrez called the threat a “PR stunt,” saying Meta “has rewritten its own rules, redesigned its products and even bent to the demands of dictators to preserve market access.”{¹²}

What the Judge Has Signaled

Judge Biedscheid told the parties he would not act as “a one-person legislature, judge and executive branch enforcer” and said he is more comfortable addressing the “mechanics of the platforms, rather than the content of the platforms,” citing constitutional and federal law constraints. He directed both sides to submit written closing statements by June 12, 2026, and asked for proposals that are “less maximalist” and “more along the lines of, ‘here’s what actually might be reasonable.'”{¹⁰}

Where the Case Stands

The $375 million jury verdict from March 2026 stands after the court denied Meta’s post-verdict challenge, and Meta has said it plans to appeal.{¹⁰} Judge Biedscheid has not yet ruled on the public nuisance claim or on the state’s request for additional financial penalties and injunctive relief. Written closing arguments were due June 12, 2026, and no ruling date has been announced.

How This Case Fits Into the Wider Litigation

The New Mexico case is separate from, and not consolidated with, the broader wave of child-safety lawsuits against Meta. More than 40 state attorneys general have sued the company, with 33 states’ cases consolidated in the Northern District of California, and a federal multidistrict litigation, In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation (MDL No. 3047), covers over 2,300 claims from parents, young adults, and school districts.{¹³}{¹⁴} A day after the New Mexico verdict, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google negligent in a separate bellwether case, awarding $6 million to a plaintiff who alleged Instagram and YouTube were designed to be addictive; Meta was held responsible for 70% of the damages.{¹⁵} Those rulings do not bind the New Mexico court, and the outcome of the New Mexico bench trial will turn on Judge Biedscheid’s own findings.

1
NM Attorney General. State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms, Inc., Complaint
2
NM Department of Justice. Attorney General Raul Torrez Files Lawsuit Against Meta Platforms and Mark Zuckerberg
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NM Department of Justice. New Mexico Department of Justice Wins Landmark Verdict Against Meta
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Source New Mexico. Santa Fe Jury Awards New Mexico $375M in Meta Child Exploitation Case
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CNBC. Jury Reaches Verdict in Meta Child Safety Trial in New Mexico
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NM Department of Justice. Attorney General Raul Torrez Marks Conclusion of Final Phase in Landmark Trial Against Meta
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NM Department of Justice. New Mexico Seeking Injunctive Relief Against Meta Fact Sheet
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The Guardian. New Mexico Meta Court Fine
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Source New Mexico. New Mexico AG Seeks Nearly $1 Billion Payment From Meta in Second Phase of Trial
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Source New Mexico. Judge Asks New Mexico, Meta to Be Pragmatic as Bench Trial Ends
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Source New Mexico. Meta Says It Could Withdraw Facebook and Instagram From New Mexico
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The Guardian. Meta New Mexico Social Media Shutdown
13
PBS NewsHour. Landmark Trial Accusing Tech Giants of Harming Children With Addictive Social Media Begins
14
Motley Rice. Social Media Lawsuits – Meta
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NPR. Meta YouTube Social Media Trial Verdict