Dozens of Meta employees have initiated legal action against the social media giant, alleging that the company utilized Artificial Intelligence (AI) to target workers for termination. The lawsuit claims the systems specifically penalized individuals who requested maternity leave, disability accommodations, or protected time off.
Dozens of workers filed the complaint in a California federal court, representing individuals affected by a workforce reduction of approximately 8,000 employees. The plaintiffs assert that Meta bypassed human managerial judgment, opting instead to rank and select staff for layoffs using internal AI performance tools.
The legal filing argues that the AI systems monitored activity, such as keystrokes and productivity metrics, which naturally declined while employees were on medical or family leave.
Consequently, the algorithms disproportionately selected workers exercising their legal rights for termination based on flawed scoring.
Specific cases include a scientist who received notification of her layoff days before giving birth and an engineer who suffered a lowered rating due to an injury. The company also let go of a manager shortly after he began medical leave.
A Meta spokesperson dismissed the allegations as meritless and factually incorrect, insisting that human leaders, not AI, make organizational decisions. Meta previously introduced monitoring software to track browser history and activity, a move that sparked significant employee backlash.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg eventually paused the monitoring program in June after more than 1,600 employees signed a petition regarding privacy violations. Plaintiffs are now seeking a preliminary ruling to halt the layoffs and are calling for an independent audit of the tools.
