Meta Platforms Inc. has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit filed by Texas that accused the company behind Facebook of illegally collecting biometric data on users without their consent, breaching Texas law.

The lawsuit was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in February 2022 and claimed that Meta breached the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act. Known as CUBI, the act prohibits a person from capturing an individual’s biometric identifiers — retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or record of hand or face geometry — for a commercial purpose unless that person informs the individual and obtains the individual’s consent prior to the capture.

By the time the lawsuit had been filed, Meta had already announced the previous November that it was shuttering its facial recognition system and deleting close to one billion people’s faces from its systems. The feature’s original intent was to identify people’s faces in photos so that they could be tagged with their identity.

The legal issue at hand ultimately came down to not that Meta was compiling the facial recognition data but that they were doing it without obtaining consent from each individual to do so.

“After vigorously pursuing justice for our citizens whose privacy rights were violated by Meta’s use of facial recognition software, I’m proud to announce that we have reached the largest settlement ever obtained from an action brought by a single State,” Paxton said in a statement. “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.”

In response to the settlement, a spokesperson for Meta told CNBC that “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.”

The settlement with Texas isn’t the first time Meta has paid big bucks to settle allegations of privacy breaches in relation to its gathering of biometric data without permission. The company, then known as Facebook Inc., settled a class action lawsuit filed in Illinois in 2015 for $650 million in February 2021.

Meta is also not alone in being targeted by Texas over the collection of biometric data. The state is also pursuing a similar lawsuit against Google LLC’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., for unlawfully collecting the biometric privacy data of millions of Texans without consent. That case is currently being heard before a Texas court.

Photo: Meta