Meta agrees to pay Texas $1.4 billion in largest state data privacy settlement

Texas announced on Tuesday that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, will pay $1.4 billion in the largest data privacy settlement brought by a state.

The lawsuit , which Texas brought in 2022, alleged that Meta illegally collected millions of Texans’ biometric information without consent, violating the state’s Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

“This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights,” Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.

The alleged violations stem from a 2011 Facebook feature that automatically suggested tags with people’s names in photos. The feature used facial recognition to identify people in images uploaded to Facebook without users’ consent, according to the lawsuit.

The Texas biometric privacy law first passed in 2009 and allows for penalties up to $25,000 per violation.

The landmark settlement payout will go to the state of Texas over five years, according to the attorney general’s office.

“We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers,” Meta spokesperson Thomas Richards said in an emailed statement.

The Texas settlement is the largest, but not the only settlement to stem from Meta’s photo facial recognition feature.

In 2021, the company settled a class action lawsuit for $650 million for allegedly violating the Illinois biometric privacy law. Meta made the feature opt-in in 2019.

Paxton opened an additional case against Google under the same biometric privacy law in 2022; it is still pending.