Record $24.6M penalty against Facebook

OLYMPIA —The maximum $24.6 million penalty was issued against Facebook’s parent company, Meta, by a King County Superior Court judge Oct. 26 in Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s campaign finance transparency lawsuit. Judge Douglass North ruled that Meta intentionally violated Washington law 822 times. Because the violations were intentional, the court imposed triple the penalty, a maximum of $30,000 per violation, as requested.

This is the largest campaign finance penalty ever in the country. North also ordered Facebook to reimburse the Attorney General’s costs and fees, and ordered that those attorneys’ fees be tripled “as punitive damages for Meta’s intentional violations of state law.”

Later the judge ordered Meta to pay $10.5 million for the state's legal fees. Meta will pay 12% interest per year on the total judgment, starting from when the payments are due. By law, campaign finance penalties go to the State Public Disclosure Transparency Account.

The law requires campaign advertisers, including entities such as Meta that host political ads, to make information about Washington political ads that run on their platforms available for public inspection in a timely manner. The state asserted that Meta violated the law repeatedly since December 2018 and committed hundreds of violations.

Source: Washington Attorney General office