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Meta has disclosed that four states are seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties from the company, alleging it designed Facebook and Instagram to addict kids and misled the public about the risks.

Getting into it: The disclosure came in a court filing where Meta responded to how California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey want penalties calculated if they win at trial. The eye-popping figure is close to the company’s entire market value of around $1.5 trillion, and it surfaces just weeks before the case heads to court.

That trial is set for August 18 in Oakland before US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who cleared the way on June 30 by rejecting Meta’s bid to toss the case, ruling that factual disputes remain over whether the platforms were designed to be addictive, whether Meta falsely denied it, and whether it partially marketed them to children. Nearly 30 states are attached to the broader lawsuit, most claiming Meta broke the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by scooping up data on kids without parental sign-off.

Meta blasted the number as baseless, with a spokesman saying, “A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement.” The spokesman added that the states’ math is “outlandish” and “untethered from reality.”

The states’ specific proposals remain sealed, but their attorneys said last month they landed on the penalties by taking each alleged violation and applying the fine each state’s law sets for it, with the violation tally pegged to how many underage users they estimate got hurt. Meta counters that the math improperly double- or triple-counts the same teens to inflate the total. The company also leans on the argument that there’s no recognized psychiatric diagnosis for “social media addiction” in the first place, which it says means it couldn’t have been lying when it denied its apps hook people.

Despite all of this, California Attorney General Rob Bonta pledged to press ahead. In a statement, his office said, “Our lawsuit alleges Meta has prioritized profits over the safety of kids and fueled the mental health crisis we see impacting a generation of American children.” They added that they look forward to holding Meta “fully accountable” at trial.