A group of 26 current and former Meta employees has filed a federal lawsuit against the tech giant, alleging that the company used artificial intelligence systems to unfairly target workers for layoffs. The lawsuit, filed in California, claims that Meta’s internal AI tools disproportionately selected employees who had taken protected medical, parental, or disability-related leave. According to the complaint, these automated systems evaluated staff based on metrics like productivity, software development activity, and AI tool usage, without adjusting for time spent away from work on legally protected leave.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, conducted a significant workforce reduction earlier this year, cutting approximately 8,000 jobs. The plaintiffs argue that instead of relying on the informed judgment of human managers, the company utilized a "constellation" of internal AI systems to score and rank employees. These tools, which include an internal chatbot called "Metamate" and various activity-monitoring dashboards, allegedly treated time off as a lack of engagement or underperformance.
One plaintiff reported being selected for redundancy while on approved pre-birth maternity leave, while others alleged that their performance scores dropped specifically because they were not active in the company’s AI-integrated systems during their leave. The lawsuit contends that this process effectively penalized workers for exercising their legal rights to take leave. The plaintiffs are seeking a court order to halt the finalization of these layoffs, alongside requests for reinstatement, back pay, and other damages.
In response to the filing, a Meta spokesperson stated that the company believes the claims lack merit and are not based on facts. The company maintained that its organizational and workforce management decisions are made by people rather than automated systems. As the case proceeds, it highlights growing concerns regarding the role of AI in workplace decision-making and the potential for algorithmic bias to inadvertently violate labor protections.