BREAKING: Meta Loses in Court. Here Come 1600 More Lawsuits.
A New Mexico jury needed only a day to find that Meta endangered children. It's the first social media case to go to trial, the first to reach a verdict, and the first to establish a new kind of harm.
A jury in Santa Fe just found Meta liable on both counts brought by the State of New Mexico under the Unfair Practices Act, ordering the company to pay $375 million in civil penalties for failing to protect children on Facebook and Instagram from sexual exploitation.
The jury deliberated for only a day.
Closing arguments ended Monday. After six weeks of testimony from 40 witnesses — including Meta executives, former employees turned whistleblowers, and the state’s own investigators who created fake child accounts to document how easily predators could operate on Meta’s platforms — the jurors did not need long to decide.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed the suit in 2023, accusing Meta of creating a “breeding ground” for predators targeting children for sexual exploitation and of misleading the public about the safety of its platforms. (See below for a detailed timeline of the case.) Prosecutors argued that Meta’s algorithms directed adults toward content posted by teenage users while the company concealed its own internal findings about the problem. Meta’s attorneys argued that the company had disclosed its risks and that its safeguards, while imperfect, represented good-faith efforts. The jury disagreed.
I interviewed AG Torrez as this trial began. What he told me then was that the internal documents would speak for themselves — that the gap between what Meta told the public and what Meta knew privately was the core of the case. That prediction proved right.
This was the the first social media case to go to trial, and now it’s the first to reach a verdict. New Mexico has decided Meta must pay.
A separate jury in Los Angeles has been deliberating for more than a week over whether Meta and YouTube designed addictive platforms that damaged a young woman’s mental health — a bellwether case that could set the template for more than 1,600 pending lawsuits from families and school districts. That jury asked a question about damages last Friday and reported difficulty reaching consensus on one defendant Monday. They’re still out.
Every plaintiff’s lawyer in every one of those 1,600 cases just learned that they can win.
The $375 million penalty — while significant — is far less than the $2 billion prosecuters had sought. The figure was based on a calculation of roughly 208,700 monthly teen users of Meta’s platforms in New Mexico and a maximum $5,000-per-violation penalty. The jury came in well below that ceiling. But what the verdict establishes is not only a precedent — a jury of ordinary Americans has now decided that Meta violated consumer protection laws by failing to protect children, and that the company must pay for it — but a price.
As AG Torrez explained to me, any damages set in his case will essentially determine the price Meta will have to pay in other cases, should it lose them. And those cases involve much bigger populations — Florida, New York, Illinois — and thus much bigger penalties.
That per-user math is what makes this precedent dangerous for Meta at scale. The federal MDL in Oakland, where school districts across the country have filed suit, will use this result in settlement negotiations. New Mexico is a state of about 2 million people. Florida has 22 million. New York has 19 million. Illinois has 12.5 million. If the principle of this verdict — that Meta is liable for failing to protect kids on its platforms — gets applied in states with these larger user bases, the financial exposure isn’t hundreds of millions. It’s tens of billions.
Meta will appeal. But for now, the question of whether a company can be held liable for endangering users through design choices, even when the whole industry is uniquely and powerfully protected against liability for the crazy things that users post, is decided.
As I wrote earlier this week, the question at the heart of all these cases is whether we’re ready to add a new category of harm — behavioral harm through product design — to the list of things American courts will punish. In New Mexico, as of today, the answer is yes.
Want More?
The LA jury is still out. I’ll be covering both as they develop. Paid subscribers can find my full interview with AG Torrez and my breakdown of both trials here:
→ Did Meta Connect Children to Predators? (with AG Raúl Torrez) → The Social Media Addiction Trial Explained → America Is Deciding Whether Your Choices Can Be a Crime Scene
If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, now is a good time. This story is moving fast, and the next verdict — in LA — could land any day.
HISTORY OF THE CASE
December 2023 — New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez files suit against Meta Platforms and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accusing the company of enabling sexual exploitation of children on Facebook and Instagram and of misleading the public about the safety of its platforms. State investigators had created fake child accounts to document how easily predators could contact minors and how Meta responded — or didn’t.
January 27, 2026 — Jury selection begins in Los Angeles for the first bellwether social media addiction trial, in which a plaintiff identified as Kaley accuses Meta and YouTube of designing addictive platforms that damaged her mental health. TikTok and Snap settle with the plaintiff before trial. More than 1,600 similar lawsuits sit in the pipeline.
February 9, 2026 — The New Mexico trial opens in Santa Fe. Over the next six weeks, 40 witnesses testify — including Meta executives, former employees turned whistleblowers, psychiatric experts, and the state’s own undercover investigators.
February 18, 2026 — Mark Zuckerberg takes the stand in Los Angeles, testifying before a jury for the first time on claims about social media harming children. Plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier confronts him with internal documents and a 35-foot-wide collage of the plaintiff’s Instagram selfies. I covered this in The Social Media Addiction Trial Explained.
March 4, 2026 — A recording of Zuckerberg’s deposition is played for jurors in Santa Fe as part of the New Mexico trial. I published my interview with AG Raúl Torrez around this time, in which he laid out the core of the state’s case.
March 5, 2026 — The U.S. Senate unanimously passes COPPA 2.0, extending child privacy protections to kids under 17. The House version stalls in committee over bipartisan disagreements.
March 13, 2026 — The LA jury begins deliberations after closing arguments from both sides.
March 20, 2026 — After six days of deliberation, the LA jury sends Judge Carolyn Kuhl a question about damages, suggesting they may have reached a finding of liability for at least one defendant.
March 23, 2026 — Closing arguments wrap in Santa Fe. Prosecutors ask the jury for more than $2 billion in damages. The same day, the LA jury reports difficulty reaching consensus on one of the two defendants. I published America Is Deciding Whether Your Choices Can Be a Crime Scene covering both cases in real time.
March 24, 2026 — Less than a day after closing arguments, the New Mexico jury finds Meta liable on both counts under the state’s Unfair Practices Act and orders $375 million in civil penalties. It is the first social media case to reach a verdict. The LA jury remains in deliberations.
As long as the panopti-garchy doesn’t get to seize this for their censorship agendas, this is a good thing.
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