by Jake Goldstein-Street, Washington State Standard
June 18, 2026
Facebook’s parent company must pay the largest campaign finance fine in Washington state history, the state Supreme Court affirmed in a split decision Thursday.
Meta urged the justices to declare a state law unconstitutional under the First Amendment to avert the $35 million penalty. The social media conglomerate repeatedly hadn’t provided required records for digital political advertisements hosted on its platforms.
The divided ruling is the latest development in the multi-year litigation that began during Gov. Bob Ferguson’s time as Washington’s attorney general. Washington first sued Meta over the issue in 2018, and the company agreed to pay about $200,000 in damages at that time.
Six justices sided with the state to uphold the campaign finance law, using different legal reasoning to make their conclusions.
The justices didn’t reach a consensus on whether the fine is excessive. Three agreed with it, three ruled it was calculated incorrectly and three others said it may have been determined correctly, but is still excessive.
Without a majority view, the penalty is affirmed.
Writing the lead opinion, Justice G. Helen Whitener called Meta a “willful repeat offender with vast resources” that can comply with Washington law but chooses not to.
State Attorney General Nick Brown called the ruling a “major win for election transparency.”
A Meta spokesperson said the company was “disappointed in this ruling and evaluating the decision.”
The case
Washington’s Fair Campaign Practices Act, first enacted in 1973, now requires advertisers like Meta to maintain records related to campaign ads they run, including the cost of the ad, its sponsor, the targeted audience and other information. The advertisers must make this information available for inspection upon request.
The goal is to inform voters about who is spending money to influence voters in Washington’s elections.
But some internet companies, including Google and Yahoo, have said they would no longer accept political advertisements in Washington out of fear of getting sued. Meta has said the money made from the ads isn’t worth the potential costs.
Lost advertising access on the platforms could particularly hurt smaller campaigns with fewer resources, which use digital ads to reach lots of voters without having to spend much, Meta argued.
“Meta is committed to freedom of expression, and digital advertising levels the political playing field, empowering upstart challengers with limited resources to inexpensively and effectively spread their message to interested voters,” the company spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.
Despite this, digital campaign advertising spending has been rising in recent years.
“Enforcing disclosure requirements is an essential tool the State has available to educate and keep the public informed about how billions of dollars are spent to influence their votes,” Whitener wrote. “The State cannot account for internal corporate decisions.”
“Meta’s argument that the disclosure law reduces the amount of political speech available to the public misconstrues the purpose of the disclosure law, which is to facilitate election transparency, not to ensure a proliferation of political advertisements,” Whitener continued.
The attorney general’s office sued Meta in 2020 over allegations the company had intentionally violated the Fair Campaign Practices Act hundreds of times by not disclosing some of the required information. Meta’s Ad Library includes some but not all of the necessary records.
A judge in King County sided with the state, levying a $35 million fine against Meta for the violations. An appeals court agreed, leading Meta to ask the high court to weigh in. The state and the California-based company argued the case before the justices. Meta, represented in court by former Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, said the penalty was excessive and incorrectly calculated.
Three justices — Sheryl Gordon McCloud, Charles Johnson and Barbara Madsen — agreed it’s over the top. Gordon McCloud writes that Meta’s transgression “does not support the highest penalty ever imposed for partial violations of administrative reporting rules in the history of this state or this country.”
“This is certainly not the State’s — or the country’s — largest campaign finance violation ever,” Gordon McCloud continued. “It is not even a crime.”
Meta also argued the law essentially prohibited covered political speech.
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Gordon McCloud’s dissent would’ve sent the case back to a lower court to further investigate the potential First Amendment issues.
“Political advertising is political speech,” Gordon McCloud wrote. “Whether we like the content of that speech or not, it is entitled to the highest protection. For that reason, laws (like the FCPA) that burden political speech violate the First Amendment unless those laws further a compelling state interest by the least restrictive means possible.”
Two-thirds of the penalty is meant to go to a state account dedicated to transparency and the other third to the state for attorney fees.
This story has been updated with comment from Meta.
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