26 Meta Employees Sue Over AI-led Layoffs Targeting Workers on Leave America

A group of 26 Meta employees has sued the company, claiming it used artificial intelligence systems to select people for layoffs, disproportionately targeting those on medical, parental or family leave. 

They are among the 8,000 employees, or about 10 per cent of its workforce, Meta said it would lay off in May. 

The lawsuit filed late Monday in federal court in Oakland, California, claims the company used internal AI systems, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI token-usage



dashboards and algorithmically assisted performance rankings, among other methods, to determine who would be laid off.

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 says. Meta, according to the lawsuit, did not account for protected leave when taking employees' scores into account and "did not pause the system for the individualised, leave- and accommodation-neutral review that the law requires."