New Mexico just handed Meta its first courtroom defeat over child safety, and the rest of the country is watching

A jury in Santa Fe on Tuesday ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties after finding the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangered children.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez’s office called the decision a “watershed moment for every parent concerned about what could happen to their kids when they go online,” according to a press release issued right after the ruling.

The verdict, reached after a six-week trial, found Meta liable on both claims brought by the state under its Unfair Practices Act. At $5,000 per violation — the maximum allowed under the law — the penalty may seem paltry for a company valued at $1.5 trillion by public market investors. But the dollar amount isn’t as important as the fact that this is the first jury verdict of its kind against Meta over harm to young people.

“Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew,” Torrez said in a statement following the verdict. “Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”

New Mexico’s case against the company grew out of a 2023 undercover investigation in which state investigators created decoy accounts on Facebook and Instagram posing as users younger than 14. Those accounts were sent sexually explicit material and solicited for sex by several New Mexico men who were arrested in May 2024. Two were apprehended at a motel where they believed they’d be meeting a 12-year-old girl, based on conversations they had with the accounts.

The operation formed the basis of the state’s case. The evidence it produced — along with internal Meta documents and testimony from former employees — showed that company staff and outside child safety experts repeatedly raised alarms about dangers on the platforms and were largely ignored.

Some of the most damaging testimony came from people who worked inside the company.

Arturo Bejar, who spent six years as an engineering and product leader at Meta beginning in 2009, told the court (after testifying before the Senate years earlier) about his efforts to warn Meta executives after his own 14-year-old daughter received unwanted sexual advances on Instagram. He also testified that the same personalized algorithms that make Meta’s platforms effective at targeting ads could be equally useful to predators.

“The product is very good at connecting people with interests,” Bejar said, “and if your interest is little girls, it will be really good at connecting you with little girls.” 

Brian Boland, a former vice president of partnerships product marketing at Meta who spent nearly a dozen years with the company, testified that when he left the outfit in 2020, he “absolutely did not believe that safety was a priority” to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Zuckerberg was deposed as part of the case, and a recording of that deposition, which was taken a year ago but shown to jurors earlier this month, offered some of the trial’s more memorable moments. Zuckerberg described research on whether the platforms are addictive as “inconclusive,” a characterization that the state pushed back on, noting Meta’s own researchers found that several product features were designed to produce dopamine responses and increase time spent on the apps. 

When asked whether he, as a parent, had a right to know if a product his own child was using was addictive, Zuckerberg said there was a lot to “unpack in that.” He then noted that he and his wife personally look into whether products are “good to use” before giving them to their children, and that they “also oversee how they’re used.” His children, he noted, are “younger.”

Unsurprisingly, Meta said it plans to appeal. “We respectfully disagree with the verdict,” a spokesperson said to media outlets, adding that the company “works hard to keep people safe” on its platforms. 

The New Mexico case is far from Meta’s only legal headache. Meta and YouTube are also embroiled in a trial in Los Angeles over claims that their platforms are addictive and have harmed young users. 

That second verdict could come soon. A jury is deliberating in the case, which was brought by a plaintiff known only as K.G.M., a 20-year-old California woman who claims she became addicted to social media as a child and that she suffered anxiety, depression and body-image issues as a result. (TikTok and Snap were also defendants and settled before trial.) 

On Monday, the judge overseeing the Los Angeles case told jurors to keep deliberating after the panel indicated it was having trouble reaching a verdict on one of the defendants – raising the possibility of at least a partial retrial. 

Meanwhile, a second phase of the New Mexico case – a bench trial (meaning there is no jury) on public nuisance claims scheduled to begin May 4 – could result in more penalties, along with court-mandated changes to Meta’s platforms, including age verification requirements and new protections for minors. 

Rather than arguing that Meta broke a specific consumer protection law, the state is arguing that the company’s platforms have broadly harmed the health and safety of New Mexico residents.