New Mexico’s trial against Facebook for alleged role in Cambridge Analytica data breach begins

Attorneys for the New Mexico Department of Justice are expected to make their opening arguments Wednesday in the state’s case against Facebook for its role in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

Attorneys general across the nation joined multi-state lawsuits against the social media company, amid news reports in 2018 that Cambridge Analytica was harvesting Facebook users’ data to use in political campaigns. Then-New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, however, decided to forgo a multi-state coalition and to sue Facebook individually over its alleged role in exposing users’ data.

He filed the lawsuit in 2021. Jury selection began Tuesday and the state’s lawyers announced they expect to present their opening remarks Wednesday.

“Facebook’s data breach didn’t just expose private information, it revealed a pattern of misrepresentation about how user data was collected, shared and exploited,” Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement. “This case is about holding one of the world’s largest corporations accountable for violating the trust of New Mexicans and users across the globe.”

The trial is expected to run through early October. New Mexico Department of Justice lawyers expect to call corporate propaganda experts as witnesses and to play video depositions of Mark Zuckerberg and former Facebook Chief Operations Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

The trial will be the third time Torrez and his attorneys face off against the tech company’s lawyers in a Santa Fe courtroom in recent months.

In March, a Santa Fe jury ordered Meta — Facebook’s parent company — to pay $375 million in damages to the state after it found the company misrepresented the risks to teen users’ mental health. And in August, First Judicial District Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered the company to pay $567 million for an abatement fund aimed at ameliorating harms done to the state’s youth. Meta, on Friday, filed a slew of motions seeking to have Biedscheid amend his orders.

Similar to the case that resulted in the $375 million award, the NMDOJ brought the current case under the state Unfair Practices Act and seeks the maximum civil penalties available under that law.