GoKawiilMark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, is seen in the U.S. Capitol after a meeting in the office of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Thursday, March 26, 2026.
Meta is back in a New Mexico courthouse on Monday as part of an ongoing child safety case that could determine whether the company is considered a public nuisance and must spend potentially billions of dollars to fix its products.
The social media company lost the first round of the trial centering on claims brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez that it failed to safeguard children on its apps from sexual predators and misled the public about alleged harms from use of apps like Instagram and Facebook.
A New Mexico jury ruled in March that Meta willfully violated the state's unfair practices act, and that the company must pay $375 million based on the number of offenses.
The second phase of the proceedings, known as a juryless bench trial, will establish over a three-week period if Meta's actions created a public nuisance, thus warranting potential product changes.
Meta said in a quarterly filing last week that New Mexico's AG's office is seeking "approximately $3.7 billion in abatement costs as well as injunctive relief, which includes requests for extensive changes to the manner in which we provide our services in New Mexico."
For Meta and its peers, the trial is one of several this year that experts have characterized as social media's "Big Tobacco" moment. In the 1990s, tobacco companies were forced to pay billions of dollars for misleading the public about the safety and potential harms of their products, and subsequently saw their power and influence dwindle dramatically.
"That was not an instant change, but if one compares the power held by big tobacco companies today, and compares it to the 1980s or even 90s, I mean there's no comparison," said Nikolas Guggenberger, an assistant professor at the University of Houston Law Center. "They really just don't have that position anymore."
The other major social media trial to have concluded this year took place in Los Angeles in March. Meta and Google's YouTube service lost a personal injury trial there involving a plaintiff who alleged she became addicted to apps like Instagram and YouTube as a child.