A new Meta lawsuit alleges the company unfairly targeted employees who took protected medical or family leave when selecting workers for mass layoffs. Futhermore, an AI system is being blamed for incorrectly targeting employees for layoffs.
According to the federal complaint, 26 current and former Meta employees claim the company relied on artificial intelligence systems, activity monitoring, and algorithmic performance measurements when selecting workers for its May 2026 layoffs. Every plaintiff says they had taken, requested, or received approval for protected leave, or had requested an accommodation for a disability, during the preceding 24 months.
The lawsuit was filed July 13 in the Northern District of California. According to The Associated Press, the anonymous plaintiffs include employees who took medical leave, pregnancy leave, parental leave, bereavement leave, or time away to care for family members. The workers are challenging their scheduled separations while preparing to pursue their individual claims through arbitration. (AP News)
Per the complaint, Meta began notifying approximately 10 percent of its workforce on May 20 that their positions had been selected for elimination. The filing alleges Meta did not build its termination list through the direct judgment of managers familiar with each employee’s work. Instead, the plaintiffs claim Meta used a “constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems” to score and rank employees.
Those alleged systems included an internal assistant called “Metamate,” employee trained “second-brain” agents, AI usage dashboards, keystroke and activity information, performance rankings, and calibration data. According to the filing, the process also considered output volume, code activity, performance ratings, AI token consumption, and other measurements that employees could not accumulate while away from work.
That allegation sits at the center of the Meta AI lawsuit. The plaintiffs argue that Meta failed to remove protected absences from the measurement periods or provide a separate review for employees whose output had been affected by leave or a disability.
“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 lawsuit alleged.
Multiple workers noticed that their AI usage scores declined after vacations and protected leave. One Meta director cited in the filing allegedly monitored AI adoption dashboards that “failed to distinguish employees’ leave from lack of engagement.” The filing claims Meta did not pause those measurements when employees were absent for approved reasons.
The personal allegations show why this case carries consequences beyond a debate about workplace software. One scientist received her layoff notice while on approved leave before giving birth. Her water broke the next day, and she gave birth on May 22. The filing says two of the three employees selected from her senior manager’s organization were away for reasons connected to pregnancy or childbirth.
Another plaintiff says his manager discouraged him from taking medical leave that Meta’s provider had already approved. According to the court filing, the manager allegedly warned that senior leadership would “definitely” terminate him or nominate him for a layoff if he proceeded. When the employee raised Washington’s protections for family and medical leave, the manager allegedly responded, “This is Meta,” and “if the company wants something, they make it happen.”
The plaintiff says he abandoned the leave request and stopped planned treatment because he feared retaliation, according to the complaint. The filing says he was later selected for termination despite receiving a positive performance message from the same manager. Those allegations have not been proven in court.
The workers behind the Meta AI lawsuit are asking the court to stop their separations while their discrimination and retaliation claims proceed through private arbitration. According to Reuters, the earliest terminations were scheduled to become final July 22. Per The Associated Press, all 26 plaintiffs remained employed when the lawsuit became public.
“Meta deliberately kept the mechanics of its selection process secret from its employees—its CEO said as much,” the plaintiffs’ counsel wrote in an email to Fast Company. “That is why an independent audit is needed now, not months into arbitration discovery.”
Meta disputes the entire premise of the case. In a statement, a company spokesperson said, “These claims lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”
That response creates a critical distinction for the Meta AI lawsuit. The plaintiffs do not necessarily need to show that a chatbot independently fired them. Their complaint argues that AI generated scores, surveillance data, and algorithmic rankings influenced a process that human managers ultimately carried out. Meta maintains that people made the organizational decisions.
The dispute arrived during Meta’s aggressive shift toward AI centered operations. Meta cut roughly 8,000 jobs, moved about 7,000 employees into AI related initiatives, eliminated management positions, and closed approximately 6,000 open roles during its May restructuring. The company’s internal plans called for smaller teams designed around AI workflows.
Meta’s own first quarter financial report showed 77,986 employees as of March 31. The company reported $56.31 billion in quarterly revenue and projected between $125 billion and $145 billion in capital spending for 2026, with additional data center capacity among the reasons for the increased forecast.
The company’s AI transformation has also faced internal complications. Mark Zuckerberg told employees in July that AI agent development had moved more slowly than executives anticipated and that the restructuring had not been as clean as it could have been. It has also been confirmed that Meta had paused a controversial employee activity tracking program during a data security review.
The Meta AI lawsuit could become an important test of how established worker protections apply when artificial intelligence helps evaluate employees. The complaint invokes the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and several state laws.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has previously warned that federal discrimination laws continue to apply when employers use algorithms or artificial intelligence to assess applicants and employees. The agency has advised employers to consider whether automated tools create barriers for people with disabilities or disadvantage protected groups.
No court has determined that Meta discriminated against these employees. Still, the case presents a question every workplace embracing AI will eventually have to answer: when a system mistakes protected absence for poor performance, who is responsible for the decision that follows?
