A group of 26 Meta employees has taken legal action against the company, alleging that its use of artificial intelligence systems to determine layoff picks disproportionately affected workers on medical, parental, or family leave. The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Oakland, California, targets Meta's broader restructuring that eliminated 8,000 jobs, roughly 10% of its workforce, in May.
The plaintiffs claim Meta relied on internal AI tools, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance rankings to decide who would be cut. According to the complaint, these metrics inherently penalize employees who are absent due to protected leave, as they cannot accumulate the same scores or ratings as active workers.
“Many of these scores and ratings, 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 states. It further alleges that Meta failed to account for protected leave when evaluating employees and did not pause the system for the individualized review required by law.
As a result, workers on protected leave were disproportionately selected for layoffs, the lawsuit says. All 26 anonymous plaintiffs took protected leave and requested or received reasonable accommodations for disabilities. Although they have been notified of their termination, they remain employed by Meta, with separations scheduled to begin July 22.
Many of the plaintiffs were on parental leave. About half took leave for caregiving or pregnancy-related reasons, including eight women on maternity or pregnancy-related leave, four men on parental leave, and one woman who took leave to care for a family member and later bereavement leave. One employee disclosed a serious health condition and disability approved by Meta’s own provider but was allegedly discouraged by a manager from taking leave, with a warning that doing so would result in layoff selection.
Meta responded in a statement, calling the claims “lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”
The lawsuit invokes “disparate impact liability,” a civil rights doctrine that holds facially neutral policies discriminatory if they disproportionately burden a protected class and are not job-necessary. This concept, codified in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, has faced pushback from the Trump administration, which ordered federal agencies to deprioritize its enforcement, arguing it undermines meritocracy. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has dropped cases as a result, but the Meta lawsuit underscores that companies remain vulnerable to such litigation in the age of AI.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that Meta’s algorithmically assisted process, by systematically recording absences as reduced performance, falls more heavily on women, who disproportionately take pregnancy and caregiving leave. The lawsuit cites Title VII and the landmark 1971 Supreme Court ruling that recognized disparate impact.
The plaintiffs seek to preserve the status quo, keeping workers employed pending arbitration. Their lawyers warned that once separations are final, the harms are irreversible: employer-subsidized health coverage lost during pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and active medical treatment; time-bound leave rights extinguished; unvested equity forfeited; and immigration consequences triggered. The case highlights ongoing tensions as AI-driven layoffs surge, raising questions about transparency and fairness in automated decisions.
This lawsuit also comes amid broader debates about return-to-office mandates and worker protections, as well as union struggles to retain members in a shifting labor landscape. The outcome could set a precedent for how companies use AI in workforce management while complying with employment laws.
