More than two dozen former Meta employees are suing the company, claiming it used artificial intelligence tools to unfairly select workers on parental or medical leave for dismissal during mass layoffs in May.

According to the lawsuit, Meta used a constellation of internal AI tools—including an internal assistant called Metamate, employee-trained AI agents, and dashboards displaying AI token usage—to score, rank, and select workers for termination. The employees allege that Meta failed to exclude people on protected leave from this ranking system, which resulted in those workers being disproportionately targeted for layoff.

The layoffs occurred as part of Meta's plan to cut 10 percent of its workforce, or roughly 8,000 workers. The lawsuit accuses Meta of violating federal and state laws that prohibit employers from terminating workers for taking protected leave.

Meta disputes the allegations. "These claims lack merit and are not based on facts," Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton told The Verge. "Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI."

In Layman Terms

Here's what the lawsuit alleges happened: Meta built several AI systems designed to evaluate employee performance and help decide who should be laid off. These tools looked at various data points and gave each worker a score. The problem, according to the former employees, is that the AI systems didn't account for the fact that some workers were on parental leave or medical leave—periods when they legally cannot be penalized for their absence from work.

Because the AI didn't exclude these workers from its ranking, people on protected leave ended up with lower scores than they would have otherwise received. This made them more likely to be selected for layoff. The employees argue this violated their legal rights to take leave without facing retaliation.

Why This Matters

This case raises important questions about how companies use artificial intelligence in employment decisions. If the allegations are true, it suggests that AI tools—even when designed for a neutral purpose like performance ranking—can inadvertently discriminate against workers exercising legal rights. For employees, it highlights a risk: automated systems making decisions about your job without human oversight or safeguards.

The case also matters because it tests whether existing labour laws—written long before AI became common in hiring and firing decisions—can protect workers in the age of algorithmic decision-making.

What We Still Don't Know

The source material does not specify how many of the roughly 8,000 workers laid off in May were on protected leave, or what proportion of those were included in the lawsuit. It is unclear whether Meta's AI systems were explicitly programmed to exclude workers on leave but failed to do so, or whether the company simply did not build that safeguard into the tools at all. The lawsuit's current status and next steps are also not detailed in the available reporting.

Sources: The Verge