A New Mexico judge yesterday ordered Meta to pay $567 million for a fund that would alleviate the “public nuisance” created by its social media services. The order to pay for youth mental health care is in addition to $375 million in civil penalties that a jury ordered Meta to pay earlier in the same case.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Meta in a Santa Fe County court in 2023. A jury found in March 2026 that Meta’s social media platforms do not effectively protect kids from child exploitation and ordered the company to pay civil damages for violating state consumer protections and misleading parents about the safety of its apps.

The jury trial was just phase 1 of the case involving Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. “The Phase 1 jury trial considered the State’s Unfair Practices Act claims and resulting civil penalties. The Phase 2 bench trial considered the State’s request for abatement based upon the State’s allegation that the Defendant, Meta, created a public nuisance,” Judge Bryan Biedscheid wrote yesterday in the $567 million judgment. Meta reported $60.8 billion in revenue and $15.85 billion in net income in Q2 2026.

Biedscheid concluded that “Meta is a cause of and has substantially contributed to a public nuisance in New Mexico and is required to abate that public nuisance.” He said the evidence shows “New Mexico is experiencing a youth mental health crisis” with increased rates of suicide and eating disorders.

The youth mental health crisis is “burdening public and community resources throughout the State,” and “overwhelmed the systems in place for addressing such harms,” he wrote. This is in part due to problematic social media use exacerbated by “Meta implement[ing] platform features that were designed to maximize engagement and time spent on its platforms, for all users and for teenage users in particular,” the judge wrote.