Washington state’s attorney general filed a motion last week seeking the maximum penalty of $24.6 million in civil penalty against Meta, for violations of a state law requiring advertising platforms to publicly disclose detailed information about political ads. Although each violation of the state’s law comes with a $10,000 penalty, intentional violations allow the court to triple the penalty for a maximum of $30,000 per violation.
Specifically, earlier this month, a state judge ruled that the social media giant intentionally committed over 800 violations of the state’s Commercial Advertiser Law which requires political advertising to disclose the cost and sponsors of the ads, as well as the ads’ targeting and reach information, to provide voters with transparency. According to the AG’s announcement, Meta placed identified Washington political ads and some information about them in an online, publicly available Ad Library, but it did not include all the information that Washington law requires of advertisers to maintain and make available to the public about state political ads.
The AG’s office claimed in its motion that Meta “has spent years blatantly disregarding Washington’s Commercial Advertiser Law and making empty promises of transparency,” alleging the violations have continued since 2018. In 2018 Washington filed its first lawsuit against Meta, or Facebook at the time, for a failure to comply with record keeping and inspection requirements. The company then expressed their “commitment to transparency in campaign finance and political advertising.”
However, the state’s motion alleges that Meta thereafter continued to exhibit an “intentional pattern of non-compliance” in violating the law, leading to multiple complaints and an investigation relating to Commercial Advertiser Law violations. The AG filed another lawsuit in against Meta in 2020 for repeated violations of state campaign finance law, and Washington’s summary judgment motions here were filed as part of this lawsuit. Following last month’s hearing, the case was resolved without trial after Washington’s motion for summary judgment was granted.
“Facebook is a repeat, intentional violator of the law. It’s a sophisticated company,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. “If this case doesn’t warrant a maximum penalty, what does?”
The exact amount of penalties that Meta will be required to pay will be determined at a later date.
"Meta’s actions at every turn have conveyed a sense of entitlement by Meta to set its own rules in the name of its own business interests and a perceived freedom to disregard those that have been enacted by the people and lawmakers of this State." -Washington Attorney General
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