Former Meta Employees Sue Over AI-Driven Layoffs Ignoring Protected Leaves

Twenty-six former Meta employees have filed a lawsuit claiming that biased artificial intelligence systems were used to determine layoffs during the company’s recent reduction of about 8,000 jobs in May 2026. According to Reuters, these AI tools disproportionately targeted employees who were on approved medical or family leave, or who had disabilities, without accounting for their protected absences. The lawsuit alleges that Meta employed a combination of AI systems, including an internal assistant called Metamate, AI-trained "second brain" agents, dashboards tracking AI token usage, and monitoring of keyboard activity to rank employees based on performance, productivity, and AI proficiency.

The plaintiffs argue that these systems failed to consider legally protected leaves such as those under the Family and Medical Leave Act and California’s Family Rights Act, which prohibit discrimination based on such absences. They also cite California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, which bans automated decision-making systems that cause unequal impact based on disability or gender. Meta has denied the allegations, stating that all layoff decisions involved human judgment and that the lawsuit is unfounded.

The former employees are seeking a court injunction to halt further layoffs until an independent review of the AI-based selection process is conducted. Due to Meta’s employment contracts, the plaintiffs also plan to pursue arbitration. Earlier reports revealed that Meta had tracked employees’ keystrokes, mouse movements, and clicks to train AI, a practice that violated European privacy laws and led the company to suspend the program after private chats and transcripts were improperly accessible to other employees.