Judge Francis Mathew on Wednesday set the sum Meta owes New Mexico at $25 billion, in a consumer-protection case tied to Cambridge Analytica. A jury had found the company liable in September. The figure is a court order. It is not money already paid, and it is not a final judgment if the announced appeal goes ahead.

Clarín, via Reuters, writes that Attorney General Raúl Torrez called it one of the largest, if not the largest, single-state verdicts against a company in American history. The state constitution sends such consumer-protection fines to education. “We may have paid for school building for the next 100 years,” Torrez said, while conceding the money would sit frozen if Meta appeals, as expected.

Meta’s representatives, who had said in September they would contest the jury’s verdict, did not comment on Wednesday. The company’s lawyers had asked for a cap of $3.4 billion and said a sum ten times larger would violate due process. The state had asked for $35–40 billion. CNBC, independent of Clarín, adds that the judge first calculated a statutory maximum of $219.5 billion, then came down to $25 billion.

The jury held Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of the consumer-protection statute after the British consultancy Cambridge Analytica took, without consent, data from millions of Facebook accounts for political ads in the 2016 campaign. Forty-eight other states settled; New Mexico went to trial alone. Florida, Clarín writes, did not sign that settlement either. The other states’ settlement is not Wednesday’s payment.

Interest on the penalty would run on appeal; the number of violations could be cut. Meta said the state had not shown that New Mexico residents were harmed by the privacy statements. On one count the jury did not find that Facebook had lied about removing harmful content. None of those arguments cancels Wednesday’s figure. None of them collects it.

Source consulted: Meta must pay the state of New Mexico $25 billion for deceiving users about Facebook privacy — Clarín.

Image: the Steve Herrera Judicial Complex, 100 Catron Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1 May 2009, AllenS, public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The building, not Wednesday’s hearing.

Sources consulted: Meta ordered to pay $25B in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case — CNBC.