A decide on Friday dominated that Meta, Fb’s mum or dad firm, repeatedly and deliberately violated Washington campaign-finance regulation, and should pay penalties but to be decided, based on Lawyer Normal Bob Ferguson’s workplace.

The courtroom additionally denied Meta’s try to invalidate Washington’s decades-old regulation on political advert transparency, based on the Lawyer Normal’s Workplace, which has repeatedly sued Meta over campaign-finance-law violations.

The oral ruling got here throughout a listening to Friday earlier than King County Superior Court docket Decide Douglass North. A written model was not instantly accessible.

In a press release, Ferguson mentioned his workplace defeated Fb’s “cynical try” to intestine Washington’s campaign-finance transparency regulation.

“On behalf of the folks of Washington, I problem Fb to simply accept this determination and do one thing quite simple — observe the regulation,” Ferguson mentioned.

Meta didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Washington’s transparency regulation, handed by voters a half-century in the past, requires advert sellers corresponding to Meta to reveal the names and addresses of those that purchase political advertisements, the goal of such advertisements and the overall variety of views of every advert. Advert sellers should present the knowledge to anybody who asks for it.

The tech big, which owns Fb, Instagram and different social media platforms, has repeatedly objected to the necessities, and argued in a abstract judgment movement that Washington’s regulation “unduly burdens political speech” and is “just about not possible to adjust to.”

The regulation permits monetary penalties of $10,000 per violation, which might be tripled when violations are deemed intentional. The Lawyer Normal’s Workplace asserts Fb has dedicated lots of of violations since 2018. The quantity of penalties will likely be decided at a later date.