Twenty-six Meta employees have sued the company in federal court in Oakland, California, accusing it of using artificial intelligence systems in a way that disproportionately selected workers with disabilities or those on protected medical, parental or family leave for layoffs.
The lawsuit, filed late Monday, challenges Meta’s May workforce reduction, when the company moved to cut about 10% of its global workforce, or nearly 8,000 jobs. The plaintiffs say they were notified in May that their jobs would be eliminated starting July 22 and are seeking a court order to block the layoffs while they pursue their claims in arbitration.
According to Reuters, the lawsuit alleges that Meta relied on AI-assisted systems, productivity scores and AI token-usage data to help rank employees for termination. The complaint says those metrics disadvantaged people who had missed work because of medical conditions, disability, pregnancy, parental leave or family caregiving.
The workers also allege that Meta used internal tools including its Metamate AI assistant, employee-trained systems and activity-monitoring data to score and rank staff, without properly adjusting for legally protected leave.
Meta denied the allegations. A company spokesperson said the claims “lack merit” and said workforce and organizational decisions “were and are made by people, not AI.”
The lawsuit accuses Meta of violating federal and state protections for workers with disabilities, pregnant employees and people taking protected leave. The Associated Press reported that all 26 anonymous plaintiffs had taken protected leave and requested or received a disability-related accommodation.
The case could become an early legal test of how far major companies can go in using AI-assisted workplace tools during layoffs, especially when those systems rely on productivity data that may not reflect legally protected absences.
