State of New Mexico ex rel. Raúl Torrez v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. D-101-CV-2023-02838
By: Robert J. Curcio
For years, parents, pediatricians, researchers, and policymakers have raised concerns about the effects of social media on children, while courts have struggled with when and under what legal theories technology companies can be held responsible for harms associated with their platforms.
A landmark ruling in New Mexico may help shape that debate.
A New Mexico state judge ordered Meta Platforms, Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to fund $567 million in abatement programs and make significant changes to how its platforms operate for minors. That judgment followed an earlier $375 million jury verdict against Meta for violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act.
Combined, Meta’s financial exposure in the case now stands at approximately $942 million. Meta has stated that it will appeal.
The size of the judgment is significant. But for product liability lawyers, the potentially more important development is the conduct the court was willing to examine.
The case raises a question that will become increasingly important as social media, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies become more integrated into everyday life:
When does harm involving information or content become harm caused by the design and operation of the technology itself?
The answer could have consequences far beyond Facebook and Instagram.
New Mexico Meta Lawsuit: The $375 Million Verdict, Public Nuisance Ruling, & The Meta Appeal
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta in December 2023, alleging that Facebook and Instagram were designed and operated in ways that facilitated child sexual exploitation and contributed to a youth mental health crisis, despite internal warnings that the company allegedly failed to adequately address.
A jury subsequently found Meta liable for violating New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, resulting in a $375 million verdict.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid then ruled that Meta had created a public nuisance by exposing children to predators and contributing to a documented mental health crisis among young users. The court ordered the creation of a $567 million abatement fund and imposed a five-year injunction requiring substantial changes to Meta’s platforms.
Evidence in the Meta Lawsuit: Internal Research, Algorithms, & Youth Mental Health
The New Mexico litigation did not develop in isolation.
Concerns about social media and children have been the subject of increasing scientific, governmental, and public scrutiny.
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory concerning social media and youth mental health and called for additional safeguards for children and adolescents.
Evidence introduced and discussed in litigation against social media companies has also included internal corporate research, product-design decisions, recommendation systems, engagement features, and the ways platforms identify and respond to risks involving younger users.
The New Mexico court ultimately examined evidence concerning not only harmful activity occurring on Meta’s platforms, but also Meta’s own design and operational decisions.
That distinction is legally important.
The Social Media Giant’s $567 Million Abatement Fund: How the Money Will Be Spent
The court did more than impose a financial judgment. It established a detailed framework intended to address the harms identified in the litigation.
Of the $567 million abatement fund:
- $420 million is designated for clinical and behavioral health treatment programs for affected youth;
- $90 million is allocated to mental health screening and assessments;
- $33 million is allocated to public awareness and prevention training for educators and health workers;
- $15 million is designated for medical referrals and service coordination; and
- $9 million is allocated to administration, program evaluation, and quality tracking.
The structure of the fund is noteworthy because it treats the alleged harm not merely as the basis for a monetary penalty, but as a problem requiring treatment, prevention, and continuing intervention.
Court-Ordered Child Safety Changes to Facebook and Instagram
Perhaps the most consequential portion of the judgment concerns how Meta must operate its products for minors in New Mexico.
For the next five years, the order requires Meta to cap combined Facebook and Instagram use for minors in New Mexico at 90 hours per month or approximately three hours per day.
The platforms must also block push notifications to minors overnight from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and during school hours on weekdays.
Among other requirements, Meta must:
- hide “like” counts by default for minor accounts;
- restrict adults from messaging minors or having minor accounts recommended to them;
- prevent AI chatbots from engaging minors in romantic or sexualized conversations;
- remove adult accounts found engaging in child exploitation under a “one-strike” policy; and
- prevent minors from sending or receiving nude images.
Meta has stated that it will appeal the ruling, which means the ultimate scope and precedential significance of the judgment remain subject to further litigation.
Why New Mexico v. Meta Could Be a Legal Turning Point
For decades, one of the central issues in litigation against internet companies has been Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act.
In general terms, Section 230 provides substantial protection against treating an online platform as the publisher or speaker of information supplied by another person.
That protection creates an important distinction.
Suppose a dangerous person posts harmful material on a social media platform and someone is injured because of it. The platform may argue that a lawsuit based on that material is attempting to hold the social media company responsible for third-party content, the type of claim for which Section 230 has historically provided significant protection.
But consider a different allegation.
What if the claimed harm results from something the technology company itself designed its product to do?
The focus then shifts away from simply asking what another user posted and toward asking what the company designed, built, recommended, encouraged, knew about, or failed to change.
That distinction was important in the New Mexico litigation.
The court examined allegations and evidence involving Meta’s own practices, including platform design, recommendation systems, engagement features, protections for minors, and the company’s response to risks allegedly identified through internal research.
The case therefore was not simply about what appeared on Facebook or Instagram.
It was also about how Facebook and Instagram were designed to operate.
When Algorithms & Technology Design Become a Liability Question
Modern technology platforms do far more than passively display information.
Algorithms determine what users see. Recommendation systems decide which people, videos, posts, and subjects are placed in front of them. Notifications are designed to bring users back to the platform. Engagement systems influence how people interact with a product and how frequently they use it.
Artificial intelligence takes this development another step.
AI systems can recommend. They can generate original responses. They can make decisions. They can interact directly with individual users. And increasingly, AI is being incorporated into automobiles, medical devices, consumer products, workplaces, educational systems, and countless other aspects of daily life.
These technologies raise an important legal question:
When does a technology company’s design of a digital system become its own potentially actionable conduct?
The New Mexico court concluded that Section 230 did not immunize Meta from liability for the conduct at issue in the State’s claims.
That does not mean Section 230 has disappeared. It does not mean every injury associated with social media creates a viable claim. And it does not mean courts applying different laws to different facts will reach the same result.
But the distinction between third-party content and a company’s own product-design decisions could become increasingly important.
Harmful Content Moderation vs Product Design Defects
That distinction can also change how technology cases are investigated.
For years, much of the public debate surrounding social media liability focused on content moderation: What should platforms remove? When should an account be suspended? When, if ever, should a platform be responsible for something one user communicates to another?
The emerging legal questions go deeper.
Lawyers and courts may increasingly need to examine the architecture underneath the content:
- How did the recommendation algorithm operate?
- What behaviors was the product designed to encourage?
- What did the company know about foreseeable risks associated with particular features?
- What did internal testing or research reveal?
- Were safer alternative designs technologically feasible?
- Were warnings or safeguards available but not implemented?
- How did the product treat minors differently from adult users?
- What role did artificial intelligence or automated decision-making play in causing or increasing the alleged risk?
These questions should sound familiar to product liability lawyers.
Courts have confronted similar issues for decades when evaluating the safety and design of physical products.
What is changing is the nature of the product.
Is Social Media a Product? AI & Social Media Under Product Liability Law
That leads to an even larger unresolved question.
When software is designed to interact with consumers, influence behavior, make recommendations, make decisions, and autonomously generate outputs, should the law treat that technology differently from other products placed into the marketplace?
Traditional product liability law developed primarily around physical products.
When a manufacturer places a product into the stream of commerce, product liability law can impose responsibility when a defect in its design, manufacture, or warnings causes an injury.
Digital technology complicates that framework.
- If an algorithm recommends harmful material, is the alleged wrong the underlying content or the design of the recommendation system?
- If a platform’s engagement mechanisms allegedly encourage harmful patterns of use, is that fundamentally a content-moderation issue or a product-design issue?
- If an artificial intelligence system generates its own response to a user, who is the “speaker” for purposes of traditional internet immunity doctrines?
- And if a company knows that a feature of its technology creates a foreseeable risk of injury, should the fact that the feature consists of software rather than steel, plastic, or machinery fundamentally change the legal analysis?
The New Mexico court did not decide that social media platforms or artificial intelligence systems are “products” for purposes of every state’s product liability laws. Nor did the court resolve every question involving design-defect, failure-to-warn, negligence, or strict liability claims involving software.
Those remain developing areas of law.
But the case demonstrates why the distinction matters.
Does the New Mexico Meta Ruling Apply in Illinois?
The New Mexico judgment does not establish binding precedent for Illinois courts.
Illinois has its own product liability law, consumer protection statutes, and common-law principles. Federal law, including Section 230, can create additional issues depending on the facts and how a particular claim is framed.
But the broader question of how existing product liability principles should apply to emerging technologies is already being considered in Illinois.
Curcio & Casciato attorney RJ Curcio has testified before the Illinois House Judiciary and Consumer Protection Committees advocating for legislation that would classify large language models as “products” under Illinois law, allowing traditional product liability principles, including strict liability, to apply when defective AI products cause injury.
The principle behind that position is straightforward.
As artificial intelligence systems become technologies that consumers and businesses increasingly rely upon, the law must determine whether companies designing and placing those systems into the marketplace should bear responsibility when a defect in the technology causes a foreseeable injury.
That question becomes increasingly important as the line separating software from traditional products becomes less meaningful.
- An automobile can incorporate artificial intelligence.
- A medical device can incorporate artificial intelligence.
- A consumer product can incorporate artificial intelligence.
- A digital assistant can communicate directly with a consumer and generate its own responses.
If a defect in one of those systems causes an injury, courts and legislatures may ultimately have to answer a deceptively simple question:
Is Technology Information or a Product?
How that question is answered could determine whether traditional product liability principles, including design-defect, failure-to-warn, negligence, and strict liability theories, can evolve alongside artificial intelligence.
Why the Meta Decision Matters for AI-Powered Cars, Medical Devices, & Consumer Products
The significance of New Mexico v. Meta therefore may extend far beyond Facebook and Instagram.
The decision is part of a broader legal development in which courts, legislatures, and lawyers are being asked to examine technology companies not simply as passive intermediaries for information, but as companies that design products, make engineering decisions, deploy algorithms, identify risks, and decide which safeguards to implement.
The New Mexico decision does not provide the final answer. Meta’s appeal may affect both the judgment and its ultimate legal significance. Nor should the ruling be understood to mean that every technology-related injury creates a product liability claim.
But the questions raised by the case are unlikely to disappear.
As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in products people use every day, whether AI is merely information or is itself a product may become one of the defining product liability issues of the next decade.
Curcio & Casciato will continue to follow these developments closely as courts and legislatures determine how existing principles of accountability should apply to rapidly evolving technology.
Can Illinois Parents Sue a Social Media Company For Harm to Their Child?
Families in Illinois are not directly covered by the New Mexico judgment. But the case is part of a much broader national examination of the relationship between technology companies, product design, artificial intelligence, and injuries allegedly associated with digital platforms.
Whether a particular family has a viable legal claim will depend on the specific facts, the alleged injury, the technology involved, the conduct of the company, and the law applicable to the claim.
For families who believe a child has suffered serious harm connected to a social media platform or emerging technology, understanding how the harm occurred may be just as important as identifying what content was involved.
As New Mexico v. Meta demonstrates, the distinction between third-party content and the design and operation of the underlying technology may become increasingly important in determining when and how a social media company can be held accountable.
Meta has stated that it will appeal the ruling. The appeal may affect the judgment’s final terms and legal significance.
This article is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Every potential claim depends upon its particular facts and applicable law.