Meta sued by 26 employees who claim AI layoff tools penalised workers on medical and family leave
A group of 26 current and former Meta employees filed a federal lawsuit in Oakland, California, alleging the company used internal AI systems to select roughly 8,000 workers for termination, disproportionately targeting those with disabilities or on protected leave.
The lawsuit
Twenty-six Meta employees filed a federal lawsuit on Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland, accusing the company of using a "constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems" to score, rank, and select employees for its May layoffs. The plaintiffs, who filed anonymously, allege the AI tools structurally disadvantaged workers who had taken protected medical or family leave, as well as those with disabilities. The layoffs affected roughly 10% of Meta's global workforce, or nearly 8,000 people. The plaintiffs were notified in May that their positions would be eliminated, with terminations set to begin on 22 July. They are asking the court to block Meta from completing the layoffs pending an independent audit of the algorithmically assisted selection process.
Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.
How the AI systems allegedly worked
The complaint names several internal tools that Meta allegedly used to evaluate employees. These include "Metamate," a large language model assistant; employee-trained "second brain" agents; keystroke and activity monitoring data; AI token usage dashboards; and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration. Employees were graded on metrics such as productivity, output volume, performance ratings, AI adoption scores, and the number of AI tokens consumed. The lawsuit claims Meta's internal dashboards classified employees by their stage of AI adoption, using categories like "AI Native," "AI First," and "AI Enabled."
Those tools draw on inputs -- performance ratings, calibration scores, productivity and output metrics, 'AI-native' ratings, and AI-token consumption -- that, by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability.
The plaintiffs argue that Meta did not neutralise those inputs for protected leave, did not exclude leave-takers or accommodation-seekers from the selection cohort, and did not pause the system for those individuals. The result, they claim, was that employees on approved leave were at higher risk of appearing on the termination list.
Monitoring and data collection
According to the complaint, Meta deployed a monitoring program earlier in 2026 that captured keystrokes, screen content, mouse activity, browser history, messages, emails, and location data from company-issued devices. The program was announced through what the complaint describes as a low-visibility internal post by an engineer rather than a senior leader, with no consent prompt on at least some teams. Data from the monitoring program was allegedly used to build AI tools and to calculate employee productivity scores. Meta has not confirmed that this information was used to determine the layoff list.
Legal claims and protected status
The plaintiffs come from six states (California, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington) plus the District of Columbia. Each plaintiff took, requested, or was approved for statutorily protected leave, or requested or received a reasonable accommodation for a disability, within the 24 months preceding the layoffs. The lawsuit alleges violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the California Family Rights Act, and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. The complaint also notes that California's Fair Employment and Housing Act "forbids the use of an automated-decision system that produces disparate-impact discrimination on the basis of disability or sex, including pregnancy."
What happens next
The 26 plaintiffs remain employed by Meta for now, with their contract terminations scheduled to begin on 22 July. They are seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the layoffs until their individual claims can be resolved through arbitration, as required by Meta's employment agreements. According to Reuters, this appears to be the first lawsuit against a major US company to challenge the alleged use of AI in conducting mass layoffs. Meta has stated that the claims lack merit and that no further mass layoffs are expected this year, per an earlier statement from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
