Meta Faces Lawsuit Over AI-Driven Layoff Selection Process

Employees Challenge Algorithmic Workforce Decisions

Twenty-six Meta employees have filed a federal lawsuit alleging the company used artificial intelligence systems to select workers for termination in ways that discriminated against those on medical, parental, or family leave. The case, filed in Oakland, California, represents a test of civil rights protections in an era of increasingly automated employment decisions.

The workers are part of a broader reduction announced by Meta in May affecting 8,000 employees—roughly 10 percent of the company's workforce. According to the complaint, Meta deployed internal AI systems, keystroke monitoring, activity tracking, AI token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance rankings to determine layoff selections. All 26 plaintiffs took protected leave and requested or received disability accommodations; their separations are scheduled to begin July 22.

How the System Allegedly Worked

The lawsuit contends that Meta's scoring mechanisms inherently disadvantage employees on protected leave. Performance metrics tracked by the company's systems cannot be accumulated when workers are absent for medical or family reasons, or when disability reduces output. The complaint alleges Meta failed to pause these automated assessments or conduct individualized reviews that account for protected absences, as required by law.

Approximately half the plaintiffs took leave for caregiving or pregnancy-related reasons. Eight women had taken maternity or pregnancy-related leave, four men took parental leave, and one woman took leave to care for a family member followed by bereavement leave. One employee disclosed a serious health condition approved by Meta's own provider but was allegedly discouraged from taking leave by a manager who warned it would lead to layoff selection. The lawsuit states Meta offered no accommodation for his disability.

Meta responded that the claims "lack merit and are not based on facts," stating that "workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI."

Why It Matters

This case arrives as companies increasingly rely on algorithmic tools for workforce management while the Trump administration moves to curtail disparate impact enforcement—a civil rights doctrine holding that facially neutral policies can be discriminatory if they disproportionately burden protected groups. The administration has ordered federal agencies to deprioritize such enforcement, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has dropped some discrimination cases as a result.

Yet the Meta lawsuit demonstrates that companies remain exposed to disparate impact litigation regardless of federal enforcement priorities. Workers can pursue such claims independently if the EEOC declines their complaints, and several state laws explicitly prohibit disparate impact discrimination. The plaintiffs' attorneys argue Meta's algorithmic selection process falls more heavily on women, who disproportionately take pregnancy and caregiving leave, citing Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and a landmark 1971 Supreme Court ruling recognizing the doctrine.

The lawsuit invokes multiple federal and state laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Plaintiffs seek to preserve their employment status pending arbitration, noting that once separations are final, harms become irreversible: loss of employer-subsidized health coverage during pregnancy and medical treatment, extinguished leave rights, forfeited unvested equity, and immigration consequences.

The Associated Press first reported these details.