Meta’s AI-fueled layoffs of 8,000 employees targeted workers with disabilities and those who took protected medical or family leaves, alleged a lawsuit filed by 26 employees who were selected for termination. Meta used internal AI tools to select employees for layoffs, according to the complaint filed yesterday by 26 “Doe” plaintiffs in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
“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,” the lawsuit said.
Employees were allegedly graded, among other things, on how much they used Meta’s AI tools. “Meta’s internal dashboards classified employees by their stage of adoption of its artificial-intelligence tools, using categories such as ‘AI Native,’ ‘AI First,’ and ‘AI Enabled,’” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit is apparently “the first against a major US company to challenge the alleged use of AI in conducting layoffs,” according to Reuters. The complaint alleges that Meta’s tools for monitoring employees did not account for differences caused by disabilities and protected leaves.
“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 lawsuit said.
Meta says people, not AI, made layoff decisions
Meta says that people made the layoff decisions. “These claims lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI,” Meta said in a statement provided to Ars today. Meta did not provide any other comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleged that Meta management did not take steps to adjust scores for employees who took leave or who requested reasonable accommodations for disabilities.
“Meta did not neutralize those inputs for protected leave; did not exclude protected-leave-takers or accommodation-seekers from the selection cohort; and did not pause the system for the individualized, leave- and accommodation-neutral review that the law requires,” the complaint alleged. “The result was that employees who took protected leaves were disproportionately selected for layoff, based on scoring that not only failed to account for their protected leaves, but in effect penalized the employees for exercising their legal rights to these leaves.”
The 26 plaintiffs requested leaves or disability accommodations in the 24 months before being selected for layoffs, the lawsuit said. The layoffs are not yet finalized, but employees are scheduled to start losing their jobs on July 22, the lawsuit said.
Employee told of layoff “day before her water broke”
The May 2026 layoffs came after an internal memo in which Chief People Officer Janelle Gale told staff that Meta would cut about 10 percent of employees and stop hiring for about 6,000 open roles. “We’re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making,” Gale’s memo said.
The lawsuit said that “Meta announced these cuts even as it reported record revenue the prior month and committed to spending between $125 billion and $145 billion—more than double its 2025 expenditure—on artificial intelligence in 2026, prompting employees to question why the job cuts were necessary.”
According to the lawsuit, one Meta “scientist was selected while on approved pre-birth pregnancy leave—the day before her water broke, and just two days before she gave birth.” The lawsuit described plaintiffs who were selected for termination while on maternity or paternity leave, and others who were on medical leave for disabilities. Some allegedly had returned to work under approved work-from-home accommodations that remained in effect when they were selected for termination.
The plaintiffs work for Meta in California, Illinois, Washington, New York, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Florida. They allege that Meta violated the US Family and Medical Leave Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
They also alleged violations of various laws imposed by states and the District of Columbia. For example, an update to 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,” the lawsuit said.
Plaintiffs want to recalculate employee scores
The lawsuit seeks an injunction requiring Meta to preserve each worker’s job and/or protected-leave status, and an independent audit to examine the layoff-selection process. The proposed audit would “examine the inputs, weights, and outputs of the selection process; determine whether protected-leave status, accommodation status, or any proxy was used as an input; recompute selection scores using leave- and accommodation-neutralized inputs; and identify any named Plaintiff whose selection cannot be justified on leave- and accommodation-neutral grounds.”
Plaintiffs also want an order requiring Meta to preserve all data, models, and documents related to the layoffs “and the algorithmically assisted selection process.”
Although there are 26 plaintiffs, the lawsuit is not a class action. The complaint said that Meta conditions employment on an arbitration agreement that waives the right to participate in class actions against the company. The plaintiffs want to go through arbitration individually, but say a court order is necessary to preserve their employment while that process unfolds.
“Plaintiffs seek a preliminary injunction maintaining the status quo of their employment—preventing Meta from finalizing their separations, and from altering their compensation, benefits, equity vesting, or protected-leave status—pending an independent audit of the algorithmically assisted selection process and resolution of the merits of their claims in arbitration,” the lawsuit said.
