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

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

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

The ruling, reached after a six-week trial, found Meta liable for both lawsuits brought by the state under the Unfair Practices Act. At $5,000 per violation — the maximum allowed under the law — the penalty may seem trivial for a company valued at $1.5 trillion by public market investors. But the dollar amount is not as important as the fact that this is the first such jury verdict against Meta for harm to youth.

“Meta executives knew their products were harmful to children, ignored their employees’ warnings, and lied to the public about what they knew,” Torrez said in a statement following the ruling. “Today, the jury joined families, educators and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”

New Mexico’s case against the company stemmed from a 2023 undercover investigation in which state investigators created fake Facebook and Instagram accounts posing as users younger than 14. The accounts were sent sexually explicit material and solicited sex by several New Mexico men who were arrested in May 2024. Two of them were arrested at a hotel where they believed they would meet a 12-year-old girl, based on conversations they had with the accounts.

The process formed the basis of the state’s case. Her evidence — along with internal identification documents and testimony from former employees — showed that company employees and outside child safety experts raised repeated alarms about risks on the platforms that were largely ignored.

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

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

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

Brian Poland, Meta’s former vice president of partnership product marketing who spent nearly a dozen years with the company, testified that when he left the company in 2020, he “did not think at all that safety was a priority” for CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then COO Sheryl Sandberg.

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

When asked if he, as a parent, had a right to know if a product his child was using was addictive, Zuckerberg said there was a lot to “understand.” He then noted that he and his wife personally research whether products are “good to use” before giving them to their children, and that they “also supervise how they are used.” He noted that his children are “younger.”

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

The New Mexico case isn’t the only legal issue facing Meta. Meta and YouTube are also facing trial in Los Angeles over allegations that their platforms are addictive and harmful to young users.

This second ruling may be issued soon. A jury is deliberating the case, brought by a plaintiff known as KGM, a 20-year-old California woman who claims she became addicted to social media as a child and that she suffered from 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 asked jurors to continue deliberating after the panel indicated it was having difficulty reaching a verdict for one of the defendants — raising the possibility of at least a partial retrial.

Meanwhile, the second phase of the New Mexico case — a preliminary trial (meaning no jury) on the public nuisance claims scheduled to begin on May 4 — could lead to more penalties, along with court-ordered changes to meta platforms, including age verification requirements and new protections for minors.

Instead of arguing that Meta violated a specific consumer protection law, the state argues that the company’s platforms broadly harmed the health and safety of New Mexico residents.