A group of 26 Meta employees has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the company relied on artificial intelligence (AI) tools in determining layoffs, disproportionately affecting workers on medical, parental, or family leave. The suit, filed Monday in Oakland, California, follows Meta’s announcement in May that it would reduce its workforce by approximately 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its staff.
The plaintiffs contend that Meta used a combination of internal AI systems, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance rankings to decide which employees would be laid off. According to the complaint, many metrics employed by these systems inherently penalize employees absent due to protected medical or family leave, or those with disabilities that reduce output. The lawsuit asserts that Meta failed to adjust for these protected leaves or pause the automated evaluation process to conduct individualized reviews as required by law.
All 26 employees who brought the lawsuit currently remain employed at Meta, with their layoffs scheduled to begin July 22. Many of them had taken pregnancy or parental leave during which their work output naturally declined. Others took medical leave, including one individual with a “serious health condition and disability” approved by Meta’s provider, who alleges a manager discouraged leave-taking with warnings that it could lead to selection for layoffs. The suit also claims Meta did not provide reasonable accommodations related to disability in these cases.
Meta denied the allegations, stating that workforce decisions were made by humans, not AI systems, and described the claims as lacking merit and unfounded. The company acknowledged that about half the plaintiffs had taken leave related to caregiving or pregnancy. Among them, eight women had maternity or pregnancy-related leave, four men had parental leave, and one woman had taken leave to care for a family member followed by bereavement leave.
The lawsuit alleges violations of several state and federal laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. It further invokes the principle of disparate impact liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This legal concept holds that facially neutral employment policies may be considered discriminatory if they disproportionately affect protected groups and are not job-related or necessary.
Notably, the Trump administration had moved to limit enforcement of disparate impact claims, contending they undermine meritocracy and wrongly attribute workforce imbalances to discrimination. However, this lawsuit illustrates that companies remain at risk of disparate impact litigation amid increasing use of AI in employment decisions. Workers may still pursue such claims independently, especially where federal agencies decline to act, and various states maintain statutory prohibitions against disparate impact discrimination.