Thought Leadership
26 employees sue Meta, alleging the company used AI systems to decide layoffs and systematically discriminated against workers on protected leave.
A group of 26 employees has filed a lawsuit against the technology giant Meta in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs accuse the company of managing the selection of workers for an announced mass layoff of around ten percent of its workforce through automated systems rather than the considered judgment of human managers. The complaint describes the process as follows:
“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work. Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems — including a system referred to internally as ‘Metamate,’ employee-trained ‘second-brain’ agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration — to score, rank, and select employees for inclusion on the list.”
Complaint
According to the lawsuit, employees were graded, among other things, on how intensively they used internal AI tools. The internal dashboards classified employees based on their level of adoption into categories such as AI Native, AI First, or AI Enabled.
Discrimination against workers on protected leave
The plaintiffs allege that the monitoring and evaluation tools systematically disadvantaged employees with health conditions or those taking legally protected leaves of absence. The systems evaluated performance ratings, productivity metrics, and individual AI token consumption. By design, such metrics could not be accumulated to the same extent by employees who were on maternity leave, parental leave, or approved medical leave. The complaint asserts that management took no action to adjust these automated scores for time taken off, nor did they conduct the legally required, individualized reviews. All 26 anonymous plaintiffs had requested medical accommodations or protected leave within the 24 months prior to being selected for layoffs.
Meta denies allegations as job cuts loom
The legal battle represents the first lawsuit against a major U.S. tech company to challenge the alleged use of artificial intelligence in managing layoffs. Meta rejected the allegations in an official statement, declaring that the claims are without merit and not based on facts. The company emphasized that workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI. The announced job cuts are not yet legally finalized. The formal termination process, which will see affected employees lose their jobs, is scheduled to begin on July 22, 2026.
(red)
