Texas has reached a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta.
AP News reports that the state of Texas filed a lawsuit in 2022, accusing the technology company of gathering users’ biometric data, such as face recognition or fingerprints, without their permission, which is also against Texas state law.
Texas filed a separate complaint with Google that same year, but the lawsuit is still pending.
“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 said in a statement, according to AP News.
The $1.4 billion settlement marks the largest for a single state, the outlet notes.
“This is by far the biggest state governmental privacy settlement in history,” Chicago-based Class Action Attorney Jay Edelson explained in an email, per AP News.
This is not Meta’s first settlement. Recently, Meta reached a $68.5 million settlement with the state of Illinois for violating its Biometric Information Privacy Act, but it denied the claims in the lawsuit, according to CBS News.
Users in Illinois who used Instagram, owned by Meta, between Aug. 10, 2015, and Aug. 16, 2023, could submit a class-action claim to receive their portion of the settlement.
“That is a huge signal to other companies that they should be extremely careful if they want to trade in individuals’ biometric information,” Edelson explained.
Meta took action in 2021 amid users’ mounting concerns, saying it was shutting down its face-recognition system. According to AP News, it has erased over 1 billion faceprints from its face-recognition system.
“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,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, per AP News.
