A New Mexico court has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in a data privacy case that goes back to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. According to CNBC, a Santa Fe jury found in September that the company misled New Mexico residents about how it collects and protects their data. The jury counted more than 43 million violations of state law, each worth up to $5,000. That added up to $219.5 billion, which the judge cut to $25 billion. Interest of 15% a year will build until it's paid.

The judge didn't hold back. He said Facebook never carried out the "comprehensive investigation" it promised after the scandal broke in 2018, when the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica was accused of improperly accessing data from 87 million users. According to the filing, executives pushed to keep costs low, and the review that followed was "willfully ineffective."

This isn't Meta's first payout over the scandal. It paid $725 million in a 2022 class action and reached a roughly $17 billion settlement with a group of states in August. New Mexico wasn't part of that deal, so its case went to trial. The state also won a separate child-safety case against Meta earlier this year. Meta appealed a previous New Mexico ruling and hadn't commented on this one yet.