SAN ANTONIO — Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is also up for re-election, is suing Meta's Facebook. Paxton made the announcement Monday.
He claims the tech giant violated state law by using facial recognition on its users without them knowing.
The lawsuit claims about 20.5 million Texans are on Facebook and says Facebook's empire was built on "deception, lies and brazen abuses of Texas privacy rights."
It goes on to say Facebook was secretly capturing, keeping and profiting from Texans personal information—which violates the Texas capture or use of Biometric Identifier Act of 2009.
It also claims the company failed to destroy the information within a reasonable time.
Paxton says the suit could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties. A spokesperson with Meta says the claims are without merit and they will defend themselves "vigorously."
A similar lawsuit was just settled out of Illinois in 2021. A judge approved a 650 million dollar class action settlement over a similar law