Facebook Parent Meta Fined $24.6M for Violating Washington State’s Political Ad Disclosure Law
upstart writes:
Facebook parent Meta fined $24.6M for violating Washington state's political ad disclosure law:
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was fined the maximum penalty of $24.6 million on Wednesday for violating Washington state's campaign finance transparency law.
King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North found that Meta intentionally violated Washington law 822 times. Each fine carried a penalty of $30,000. Attorney General Bob Ferguson's office called the judgement "the largest campaign finance penalty anywhere in the country - ever."
"I have one word for Facebook's conduct in this case - arrogance," Ferguson said in a news release. "It intentionally disregarded Washington's election transparency laws. But that wasn't enough. Facebook argued in court that those laws should be declared unconstitutional. That's breathtaking.
"Where's the corporate responsibility?" Ferguson continued. "I urge Facebook to come to its senses, accept responsibility, apologize for its conduct, and comply with the law. If Facebook refuses to do this, we will beat them again in court."
[...] According to the attorney general, the law requires campaign advertisers, including entities such as Meta that host political ads, to make information about Washington political ads that run on their platforms available for public inspection in a timely manner. The state asserted that Meta violated the law repeatedly since December 2018 and committed hundreds of violations.
In court filings, Meta called Washington state "an outlier," arguing that the disclosure law violates the First Amendment by unfairly targeting political speech, and imposing onerous timelines for disclosing what Meta considers unreasonable degrees of detail to people who request information about political ads.
A judge rejected that argument in September and granted Washington's motion for summary judgment, resolving the case without trial.
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