“The result was that 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 states.
Dozens of current and former Meta employees have filed a lawsuit against the social media company, claiming that it used faulty artificial intelligence tools to target workers for mass layoffs.
According to The Guardian, the lawsuit cites Meta’s recent workforce reduction of about 8,000 employees, which took place earlier this year. Attorneys say that Meta—which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—leveraged a “constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems,” including performance ratings and activity-monitoring data, to make retention- and termination-related decisions.
“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” the lawsuit alleges. Instead, the plaintiffs say that Meta’s leadership used artificial intelligence to simply “score, rank, and select employees for inclusion on the list.”
In court documents, lawyers recall how Meta recently began using AI tools to gather data about employees’ performance rankings, productivity, and other metrics. Many of these inputs can be misleading if a worker takes sick time, vacation days, or family leave.
“The result was that 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 states.
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is a scientist who said that she applied for, and was approved to take, pre-pregnancy leave; she was notified that she’d been laid off two days before giving birth. Another worker—an engineer—said that he received a “lowered rating” because he took time off due to an injury.
The lawsuit seeks a court order temporarily preventing Meta from finalizing the layoffs.
“Once these separations are final, the harms are irreversible: employer-subsidized health coverage lost during pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and active medical treatment; time-bound leave rights extinguished; unvested equity forfeited; and immigration consequences triggered,” the lawsuit states.
Meta has contested the lawsuit’s allegations.
“These claims lack merit and are not based on facts,” Meta said in a statement. “Workforce management and organizational decisions were made and are made by people, not AI.”
The Guardian notes that Meta quietly introduced its AI-monitoring systems earlier this year, telling employees about the change through “a low-visibility internal post—made by an engineer rather than a senior leader.”
“On at least some teams,” the lawsuit says, “employees received no consent or acknowledgment prompt at all, and, at least initially, there was no way to opt out.”
Sources
26 Meta employees sue, alleging AI-driven layoff picks hit workers on medical and parental leave
Meta used AI to tag workers who took leave to be laid off, lawsuit claims
Meta used AI to target workers with medical conditions for layoffs, lawsuit claims
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