Florida’s attorney general this week rejected the $18 billion settlement with Meta, calling it too soft on the social media giant formerly known as Facebook. Florida will pursue its own litigation against Meta.
“The payouts to the states are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features have inflicted on our children,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a statement, according to Reuters and other news services. “We’ll see them at trial.”
The only other state that wasn’t part of the deal is New Mexico, Reuters reported. New Mexico secured almost $1 billion in payouts after winning a trial against Meta earlier this year. Georgia, by comparison, will see about $100 million from the settlement, news outlets reported.
Also this week, Uthmeier announced a $1.2 million settlement with the accounting firm Deloitte over alleged diversity employment practices that Uthmeier said discriminate against white and male workers. The settlement is part of a larger Republican and Donald Trump-led effort nationwide.
“It is against the law for government contractors to reward or penalize employees based on race or sex, and discrimination under DEI is still discrimination,” Uthmeier said in a statement on Facebook/Meta. “This settlement makes it clear that illegal discrimination will not be tolerated by companies doing business with our state.”
Uthmeier’s office said the settlement resolves allegations that, from 2017 to 2025, Deloitte took race or sex into account when making hiring, promotion, and staffing decisions to help promote race- and sex-based workforce goals. Business units within Deloitte received monthly summaries tracking demographic goals, color-coded green, yellow, or red depending on whether the goal was exceeded, met or slightly missed, or significantly below target.
The AG’s office argued that for the two-year period the compensation of approximately 150 of Deloitte’s most senior leaders were affected if their business units did not meet the demographic targets.
The settlement is part of a coordinated deal in which Deloitte also agreed to pay $21.5 million to the US Department of Justice and approximately $1.2 million to the state of Indiana to resolve parallel allegations under the federal False Claims Act and state laws.
Topics Florida
Was this article valuable?
Here are more articles you may enjoy.
Judge Approves $117.5 Million Settlement in ‘Complex’ Comcast Data Breach Case 
How One Florida Gas Station Worker Allegedly Defrauded Progressive of $44,700 
World Inches Toward Catastrophic Climate Events: ‘Bigger Shocks Are On the Way’ 
USI Sues 3 Former Producers After They Allegedly Moved Clients to Howden US 
