Other LanguagesCourt agreed social media giant intentionally violated Washington transparency law
OLYMPIA — The Washington Court of Appeals today denied Facebook parent company Meta’s attempt to invalidate a key provision of Washington’s decades-old, best-in-the-nation campaign finance law to avoid accountability in Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s lawsuit against the social media giant.
The three-judge panel with the Court of Appeals Division I agreed with the King County Superior Court that Meta — the tech company that owns Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms — is subject to Washington campaign finance law, and that it intentionally violated Washington law 822 times. Because the violations were intentional, the trial court tripled Meta’s penalty, for a maximum of $30,000 per violation. In all, Meta must pay $24.6 million in penalties plus 12 percent interest per year.
The trial court also ordered Meta to reimburse the Attorney General’s costs and fees, and ordered that those fees should also be tripled “as punitive damages for Meta’s intentional violations of state law.” That trebled amount totals $10.5 million. The appeals court also granted Ferguson’s request that Meta pay the office’s costs for the appeal.
By law, campaign finance penalties go to the state Public Disclosure Transparency Account.
“Meta repeatedly and intentionally violated Washington campaign finance law,” Ferguson said. “This significant penalty is appropriate for a multinational corporation that intentionally violated our law, and, instead of accepting responsibility, sought to gut our best-in-the-nation campaign finance law.”
Meta asked both courts to strike down the commercial advertiser transparency requirements in Washington’s campaign finance law despite repeatedly stating publicly that it is committed to “providing transparency during elections.”
The appeals court rejected Meta’s argument that the law is unconstitutional.
In addition, Meta asked the appeals panel to reduce its penalty, which the court also denied.
Assistant Attorney General Todd Sipe and Deputy Solicitor General Cristina Sepe are handling the case against Meta.
Meta repeatedly violated campaign finance law
Ferguson filed his lawsuit against Meta in 2020 for its repeated violations of state campaign finance law. The lawsuit asserted that Meta, then known only as Facebook, intentionally violated the state’s campaign finance disclosure law, which was first adopted by initiative in 1972. The Legislature has strengthened the law since.
This law requires commercial advertisers, like Meta and any other companies that run campaign ads in Washington, to maintain certain records on campaign ads and make them available to the public. For digital advertisers, this includes information related to the cost of the ad, the sponsor of the ad, as well as targeting and reach information.
Meta places identified Washington political ads and some information about them in an online, publicly available “Ad Library.” However, the Ad Library does not include all the information that Washington law requires advertisers to maintain and make available to the public about political ads in the state.
The Attorney General’s Office has taken action against Meta twice for failure to produce campaign advertising records. The first lawsuit was filed in 2018, and resulted in a consent decree that required Meta to pay $238,000 and included Meta’s commitment to transparency in campaign finance and political advertising. However, Meta continued to run Washington political ads without making the required information available for public inspection — prompting Ferguson to sue again in 2020.
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