Twenty-six Meta employees sued the company yesterday in federal court in Oakland, California, alleging it used artificial intelligence systems to select workers for layoffs in a way that disproportionately targeted those on medical, parental, or family leave.
The plaintiffs are among the 8,000 employees—roughly 10 percent of Meta’s workforce—that the company said it would lay off starting in May. According to the lawsuit filed late Monday, Meta deployed internal AI systems, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance rankings to determine who would be terminated.
The core allegation is that these scoring systems cannot accumulate meaningful data when workers are on protected leave or when their output is reduced by disability. “Meta did not account for protected leave when taking employees’ scores into account and did not pause the system for the individualized, leave- and accommodation-neutral review that the law requires,” the lawsuit states. As a result, employees exercising their legal right to medical or family leave were systematically disadvantaged in the selection process.
Each of the 26 anonymous plaintiffs took protected leave or requested or received a reasonable accommodation for disability. Eight are women who took maternity or pregnancy-related leave; four are men who took parental leave; and one is a woman who took leave to care for a family member and later bereavement leave. Though notified of their layoffs, all 26 remain employed by Meta, with separations scheduled to begin July 22.
The lawsuit includes specific examples of the alleged impact. One scientist was on approved pre-birth pregnancy leave when she was notified of her termination just two days before she gave birth. Another engineer said he received a lowered rating because of time taken off for an injury. A manager on medical leave was let go 16 days into his time off, despite having disclosed a serious health condition and disability approved by Meta’s own provider.
Meta rejected the allegations in a statement. “These claims lack merit and are not based on facts,” a company spokesperson said. “Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”
Legal Framework and Broader AI Scrutiny
The lawsuit invokes multiple federal and state protections, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. It also cites disparate impact liability—a civil rights doctrine holding that facially neutral policies can be discriminatory if they disproportionately burden a protected class of workers.
Disparate impact enforcement has faced headwinds under the Trump administration, which ordered federal agencies to deprioritize such cases. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has dropped discrimination complaints on this basis. Yet the Meta lawsuit demonstrates that workers can pursue such claims independently, and several state laws explicitly prohibit disparate impact discrimination. California, which is home to Meta’s headquarters, passed regulations effective in October 2025 that specifically protect workers from AI-related employment discrimination.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that Meta’s “algorithmically assisted selection process, by systematically recording such absences as reduced performance, falls more heavily on women than on men,” since women disproportionately take pregnancy and caregiving leave. They are seeking a preliminary court order to preserve the workers’ employment status while their claims proceed to arbitration, citing irreversible harms once separations are final: loss of health coverage during pregnancy and medical treatment, forfeited leave rights, unvested equity, and potential immigration consequences.
The lawsuit also highlights Meta’s employee-monitoring program, introduced earlier this year and later paused in June after more than 1,600 employees signed a petition opposing it. The program captured keystrokes, mouse activity, browser history, messages, emails, and location data on company devices. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, said the data was intended to train the company’s AI systems on employee behavior. The lawsuit alleges Meta deployed this monitoring without meaningful employee consent or opt-out mechanisms, describing it as a “low-visibility internal post” rather than a transparent company-wide announcement.
Sources
- CBS News — Core details of lawsuit, plaintiff breakdown, legal claims, Meta statement, and timeline
- AP News — Lawsuit filing details, plaintiff demographics, legal framework, disparate impact context, and Trump administration policy
- The Guardian — AI systems used, monitoring program history, Zuckerberg statements, and employee petition details
