Judge Orders Meta to pay $10.5M in Legal Fees to Washington – Facebook parent company Meta has been ordered to pay Washington state $10.5 million in legal fees on top of a nearly $25 million fine for repeated and intentional violations of campaign finance disclosure laws. The legal-fee order was issued by King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North on Friday, two days after he hit the social media giant with what is believed to be the largest campaign finance fine in U.S. history.
North ordered the company to pay within 30 days via wire transfer, check, or money order. The funds will be directed to the state Public Disclosure Commission, which is in charge of enforcing campaign finance laws. North imposed the maximum fine allowed under Washington’s Fair Campaign Practices Act, which was passed by voters in 1972 and later strengthened by the Legislature.
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Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson argued that the maximum penalty was appropriate because his office had previously sued Facebook for violating the same law in 2018. According to the news outlet, Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The company previously stated that it was weighing its options in light of the ruling.
According to Washington’s transparency law, ad sellers like Meta must keep and make public the names and addresses of those who buy political ads, the target of such ads, how the ads were paid for, and the total number of views of each ad. Anyone who requests the information from ad sellers must provide it. For decades, television stations and newspapers have followed the law.
However, Meta has repeatedly argued in court that the requirements are unconstitutional because they “unduly burden political speech” and are “virtually impossible to fully comply with.” While Facebook does keep an archive of political advertisements that run on the platform, the archive does not contain all of the information required by Washington law.
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Following Ferguson’s initial lawsuit in 2018, Facebook agreed to pay $238,000 and commit to greater transparency in campaign finance and political advertising. Instead of complying with the requirements, it later stated that it would stop selling political advertisements in the state. Despite this, the company continued to sell political advertisements, and Ferguson sued again in 2020. Meta, one of the world’s wealthiest companies, reported $4.4 billion in quarterly earnings, or $1.64 per share, on revenue of nearly $28 billion in the three-month period that ended Sept. 30.
