Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
A group of 26 current and former Meta employees has filed a landmark lawsuit against the tech giant, alleging that the company used artificial intelligence systems to disproportionately select workers with disabilities and those who took medical, parental or family leave for mass layoffs. The lawsuit, filed late Monday in federal court in Oakland, California, represents what is believed to be the first legal challenge against a major U.S. company over the alleged use of AI in conducting layoffs, and it comes as Meta prepares to finalise the termination of approximately 8,000 employees, or about 10 per cent of its global workforce, starting July 22. The complaint paints a troubling picture of how algorithmic decision-making may have systematically penalised workers for exercising their legal rights to protected leave.
According to the 71-page complaint, Meta deployed a "constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems" to score, rank and select employees for inclusion on the termination list, rather than relying on the considered judgment of managers who knew the work. Among the tools cited in the lawsuit are a large language model assistant known as "Metamate," an employee-trained "second brain" that tracks communications and documents, and a productivity score derived from keystroke and mouse activity, screen monitoring, emails and internet search history. The plaintiffs allege that these systems "by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability," and that Meta failed to account for protected leave when taking employees' scores into consideration.
The lawsuit details the human cost behind the algorithmic selections. Many of the plaintiffs took pregnancy or parental leave, during which time they would not have worked and thus had their measured output reduced. One plaintiff, a scientist, was notified of her layoff just two days before she gave birth, while she was on approved pre-birth pregnancy leave. Another, an engineer, said he received a lowered rating because of time he took off for an injury. A manager on medical leave said he was let go 16 days into his time off. One employee disclosed a "serious health condition and disability" that was approved by Meta's own provider, but according to the lawsuit, he was "discouraged and deterred from taking that leave by a manager" who warned that doing so would result in his selection for the anticipated layoffs. Each of the 26 anonymous employees took protected leave and requested or received a reasonable accommodation for disability within the past two years.
The plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary court ruling to block Meta from finalising the layoffs while they pursue their claims through private arbitration, arguing that once the terminations are finalised, the harm cannot be undone by money damages alone. They cite the loss of employer-subsidised health coverage during pregnancy, postpartum recovery and active medical treatment as irreparable harm. The lawsuit accuses Meta of violating several state and federal laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The complaint also references "disparate impact liability," a longstanding civil rights concept codified in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which holds that facially neutral policies can be discriminatory if they disproportionately burden a protected class of workers.
Meta has strongly denied the allegations. In a statement, a company spokesperson said the claims "lack merit and are not based on facts," adding that "workforce management and organisational decisions were and are made by people, not AI". The company's response underscores the central dispute in the case: whether AI tools merely assisted human decision-makers or effectively made the decisions themselves. Meta introduced its AI employee-monitoring programme earlier this year, designed to capture workers' keystrokes, mouse activity, browser history, messages, emails and location data on company devices. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the idea was to train the company's AI systems on its employees' behaviours, stating in an internal meeting that "the AI models learn from watching really smart people do things".
The lawsuit also alleges that Meta failed to test its AI systems for potential biases, in violation of recently adopted laws in California and New York City that require companies to thoroughly test automated decision systems for discrimination. The plaintiffs, who come from six states including California and New York, as well as Washington, D.C., are asking the court to order an independent audit of the AI-assisted tools allegedly used in the layoff decisions. The case comes at a time of heightened scrutiny over the use of AI in employment decisions, with states including California, Colorado and Illinois having passed laws within the last two years seeking to protect workers from AI-related bias.
The lawsuit against Meta underscores the growing tension between the rapid adoption of AI in the workplace and existing employment protections. As companies increasingly turn to algorithmic tools to manage their workforces, the case raises fundamental questions about whether these systems can adequately account for the complexities of human life—pregnancy, illness, caregiving and disability—that often require workers to step away from their desks. For the 26 plaintiffs, the fight is not just about their jobs but about whether the law will protect workers from being penalised by machines that cannot see beyond the data. Their separations are set to begin July 22, and the court now faces the task of deciding whether to intervene before that deadline.
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