New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is reportedly working with state lawmakers to draft two new bills strengthening consumer protections and child safety online, the day before 29 state attorneys general are set to face off against Meta in a separate federal trial in Oakland, California.
The legislation, which is expected to be announced in the coming weeks, would extend beyond social media to cover artificial intelligence and chatbots.
“I think there’s a lot of momentum coming out of our victory in court, and the idea is to build on that momentum,” Torrez told the Guardian.
The timing lines up two fronts in the fight over Meta and child safety: Torrez’s push at the state legislative level, building on New Mexico’s own $942 million verdict against the company, and Tuesday’s opening statements in the federal case brought by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey as part of the broader 29-state coalition that sued Meta in 2023.
One of Torrez’s bills would remove the cap on penalties for violating New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. “What we are going to do is continue to lobby Congress for that, but also to work at the state level to try and build not only a comprehensive social media safety bill, but also to reform and update our consumer protection laws,” he told the Guardian.
Torrez said his office is also pursuing a second, separate case against Meta over data privacy and civic harms, with a trial expected to begin in September. In addition, he is preparing to file a lawsuit against an AI company over a chatbot he said children have formed emotional attachments to. The New Mexico Attorney General’s office declined Fortune’s request for comment.
“We disagree with the ruling and will appeal,” a Meta spokesperson told Fortune. “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”
New Mexico’s legislative effort follows an Aug. 6 ruling in which First Judicial District Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta to create a $567 million abatement fund on top of $375 million in civil penalties a jury had already imposed in March, bringing the company’s total New Mexico liability to $942 million. The court also imposed reforms lasting five years, including age verification, overnight limits on push notifications, and mandatory time-use limits for users under 18.
An ongoing debate between privacy and security
That tension between the popularity of age verification mandates and the privacy and enforcement problems they raise has defined the broader fight over kids and social media this year. Congress has moved in fits and starts on the Kids Online Safety Act and the App Store Accountability Act, while the Federal Trade Commission has pulled back from social media rulemaking even as kids spend more than four hours a day online. Most Americans doubt existing age verification laws will actually work, and reporting has shown Gen Alpha users easily find ways around the age checks that do exist.
Child safety advocates, on the other hand, welcomed Torrez’s legislative push.
“We applaud Attorney General Torrez and attorneys general across the country who are holding Meta and other Big Tech platforms to account for their treatment of kids and teens,” Haley Hinkle, policy counsel at child advocacy group Fairplay, told Fortune. “States have been leading the charge to improve our children’s safety and data privacy online. We urge Congress to join the states in this leadership by passing the Kids Online Safety Act, bringing baseline safety by design standards to all children in the U.S.”
Julie Scelfo, founder and executive director of Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA), told Fortune: “It shouldn’t matter if a company manufactures food, toys, vehicles or digital products. Consumer product safety is the bedrock of a healthy society, and it is long past time for lawmakers to impose basic safeguards to protect children online, ones that Big Tech clearly is unwilling to implement on their own.”
“No company should be allowed to profit from products that intentionally addict and harm our kids. We applaud AG Torrez, as well as other attorneys general and lawmakers nationwide, for helping bring consumer and child safety into the 21st century,” Scelfo continued.
Tuesday’s federal fight
In the Northern District of California tomorrow, opening statements begin the case brought by the 29 states against Meta. They allege the social media giant designed Facebook and Instagram to keep children and teens on the platforms longer, to the point of physical and mental harm.
They accuse the company of illegally collecting children’s data in violation of COPPA, the same federal children’s privacy law at the center of the FTC’s rulemaking retreat. The case follows a Ninth Circuit ruling this month rejecting Meta’s bid to use Section 230 immunity to halt the trial, a decision that also cleared the way for thousands of other pending social media harm lawsuits.
The trial is expected to run seven weeks, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri both expected to testify. According to a July court filing by Meta, potential damages in the broader litigation could exceed $1.4 trillion. The company currently has a $1.5 trillion market capitalization.
