On Wednesday, a Washington state judge fined Facebook parent Meta nearly $25 million for repeated, willful violations of campaign finance disclosure laws, considered the largest campaign finance penalty in US history.

King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North handed down the maximum sentence for more than 800 violations of Washington’s Fair Campaign Practices Act, passed by voters in 1972 and later strengthened by the legislature. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson believes the cap is appropriate, given that his office sued Facebook in 2018 for violating the same law.

Washington’s transparency laws require ad sellers such as Meta to retain and disclose the names and addresses of people who buy political ads, the goals of such ads, how the ads are paid for, and the total number of views for each ad. Ad sellers must provide information to anyone who requests it. Television stations and newspapers have followed the law for decades.

But Mehta has repeatedly objected to the demands, arguing in court that the law is unconstitutional because it “places an undue burden on political speech” and is “nearly impossible to fully comply” without success. While Facebook does maintain a dossier of political ads run on the platform, the dossier does not disclose all the information required by Washington law.

In 2018, following Ferguson’s first lawsuit, Facebook agreed to pay $238,000 and pledged to increase transparency in campaign finance and political advertising. It then said it would stop selling political ads in the state instead of complying with the requirements. Still, the company continued to sell political ads, and Ferguson sued again in 2020.

“Meta was aware that its announced ban would not and did not prevent all such ads from continuing to appear on its platform,” North wrote last month, finding that the Meta violation was intentional.

Fines typically run up to $10,000 per violation but can triple if the judge believes it was intentional. North fined each of its 822 violations $30,000, or about $24.7 million. Ferguson described the fine as the largest campaign finance-related fine in US history.

Meta, one of the world’s richest companies, reported quarterly earnings of $4.4 billion, or $1.64 a share, on Wednesday and nearly $28 billion in revenue for the three months that ended September 30.