• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

Meta is urging a judge to reject New Mexico's request to fine the company between $35 billion and $40 billion over violations of the state consumer-protection law, arguing that an amount in that range would be "grossly disproportional" to the findings in the case.

"Such a massive penalty would cause legitimate businesses to flee New Mexico in droves and would run roughshod over a host of constitutional protections," Meta argued in papers filed late last week with Santa Fe County Judge Francis Mathew.

The company contends that the penalty sought by the state would violate both the federal and New Mexico constitutions, which prohibit excessive fines.

Instead, Meta argues, Mathew should impose a fine somewhere between $154 million and $1.54 billion.

"While these amounts still are constitutionally problematic ... they lessen the extreme disproportionality under the state's approach," Meta argues.

At a hearing earlier this month, Randi McGinn, an attorney representing the state Department of Justice, urged Mathew to impose an eight-figure fine.

"This court should should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money and the value of its stock price," McGinn said.

The dispute over sanctions comes several weeks after a jury determined that Meta misled consumers about Facebook's privacy practices and content policies. Much of the trial evidence reportedly focused on data harvesting by the defunct political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which purchased personal information of millions Facebook users from Alexsandr Kogan.

He collected the information in 2014 via his personality quiz app "thisisyourdigitallife."

Only around 270,000 Facebook users downloaded that app, but Kogan was able to gather information about at least 87 million of those users' friends.

The jury determined that Meta made numerous false or deceptive representations to users, including ones about privacy.

For instance, one representation found to be misleading was Mark Zuckerberg's 2010 statement "You have control over how your information is shared. We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want."

The jury found that Meta committed 2.1 violations of New Mexico law with that statement, based on the premise that the anticipated audience was the state's 2.1 million consumers. 

Jurors also decided that Meta made false or deceptive representations about its content policies, including that it doesn't allow "hate speech" on the platform.

The jury specifically found Meta made 26 misleading statements, which between them amounted to more than 43 million violations of the state's consumer protection law. That statute provides for damages of up to $5,000 per violation.

The company argues in its most recent filing that the requested fine of $35 billion to $40 billion is "grossly" unconstitutional for several reasons, including that New Mexico did not prove that residents were injured by the misstatements.

The state "failed to present evidence that any New Mexico consumer ever saw or heard the 26 statements much less was harmed by them," Meta argues. The company added that a New Mexico representative testified at trial that the state didn't receive any complaints about the statements.

Meta has separately said it disagrees with the verdict. A company spokesperson said last month that Meta has a First Amendment right to moderate its platforms in a way that "best serves the interests of our community."