On Tuesday, a Santa Fe jury ordered Meta Platforms to pay $375 million in civil damages for violating New Mexico's consumer protection law, finding that the company misled users about the safety of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp and failed to protect children from sexual predators on its platforms.1 This is the first money judgment against a social media company for alleged harms to children to come out of a jury trial in the United States.2
That is worth saying plainly: New Mexico did what no other state had done yet.2
Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed the case in 2023 after "Operation MetaPhile," an undercover investigation where state investigators created fake social media accounts posing as children under 14 and documented what happened next.3 The accounts received sexually explicit messages almost immediately. Adults showed up at a motel believing they were meeting a 12-year-old girl.4 Meta failed to disable a decoy account of a fictional mother offering her 13-year-old daughter for trafficking.5
The jury heard six weeks of testimony from 40 witnesses, including Meta whistleblower and former engineering director Arturo Bejar, who testified that he personally warned Meta executives about the problem after his own teenage daughter received sexual solicitations on Instagram.6 Internal documents showed Meta knew, and chose profit over action.7
The jury found Meta knowingly engaged in unconscionable trade practices and ordered the $375 million verdict — well below the $2 billion the state sought but still the largest child safety judgment of its kind in American history.1,2
Meta says it will appeal.8
The Duke's Take
Credit where it is due. AG Torrez built a real case, ran a seven-week trial against one of the most powerful corporations on the planet, and won.1,6 That is exactly what leadership looks like: identify a problem that is hurting New Mexico families, document it with evidence, and go after the source regardless of how big it is. The Duke has no patience for whining without solutions — and this was neither.3,6
This is the standard New Mexicans should expect from every office in the state. Find the problem, build the case, take it to the mat.
What This Could Mean for the Social Media Landscape
Here is where it gets bigger than New Mexico. This verdict does not just sting Meta — it potentially reshapes the entire tech industry's legal exposure.2,9
More than 40 state attorneys general have filed similar lawsuits against Meta, and California has a bellwether case against Meta and YouTube currently in jury deliberations that could impact thousands of similar lawsuits nationwide.9 A New Mexico jury verdict — the first of its kind to result in a money judgment — now gives every one of those states a template, a precedent, and a proven playbook.2,9
The tech industry's two big legal shields — First Amendment protections and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which broadly protects platforms from liability for user-generated content — are both now being tested in ways they have not been before.9 This verdict suggests that when a state can show a platform knowingly misled users about safety risks, those shields may not hold.1,9
Every major social media platform operating in the United States — TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, X — now has to look at this verdict and ask: what does our internal documentation show about what we knew, when we knew it, and what we chose not to disclose to parents and users?2,9
If the answer is anything close to what Meta's internal emails showed in Santa Fe, they have a problem.6,7
What Comes Next
A second phase of the New Mexico trial will determine whether Meta created a public nuisance and whether it must fund state programs to address harms to children.4 That could add significant costs beyond the $375 million verdict and potentially require Meta to make platform-wide structural changes — not just pay a fine and move on.4,8
Meta will appeal, and this will be litigated for years.8 But even if a higher court reduces the damages, the liability finding is already in the record — and that finding is what other states, other plaintiffs, and other juries will see.2,9
New Mexico put the first crack in the wall. What happens next depends on whether other states and the federal government have the spine to push through it.
Parents across this state — and this country — deserve platforms that do not treat their children as engagement units to be monetized at the expense of their safety. New Mexico just said that in court, under oath, with a $375 million verdict to back it up.1,2,6
That is the Duke's kind of win.
Endnotes
- Meta ordered to pay $375 million — cnbc.com
- New Mexico social media harms lawsuit ends in $375 million verdict — latimes.com
- New Mexico DOJ wins landmark verdict against Meta — nmdoj.gov
- Jury finds Meta liable — cnn.com
- Meta jurors weigh $2 billion fine — bloomberglaw.com
- New Mexico seeks more than $2 billion in Meta trial — abqjournal.com
- New Mexico's case against Meta digs into social media's dangers — apnews.com
- Meta ordered to pay $375 million — nbcnews.com
- Landmark trial against Meta highlights mental health risks — apnews.com
