Twenty-six current and former Meta employees filed a lawsuit alleging the company's AI-assisted layoff process discriminated against workers on protected medical or family leave by relying on metrics those employees could not accumulate while absent.
A group of 26 current and former Meta employees filed a lawsuit Monday against the company, alleging that its use of artificial intelligence in a May 2026 layoff round violated protected-leave laws and federal and state discrimination statutes related to pregnancies, disabilities, and other protected categories.
The plaintiffs, listed as unnamed in the complaint, were among the roughly 10 percent of Meta's workforce cut during the company's May layoff round. Their attorneys filed the case in the United States Northern District Court of California, and the workers intend to pursue their individual claims in arbitration.
At the center of the lawsuit is what the plaintiffs describe as Meta's "constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems." According to the legal complaint, those systems drew on inputs including performance ratings, calibration scores, productivity and output metrics, "AI-native" ratings, and AI-token consumption when determining which employees to cut.
"Those tools draw on inputs—performance ratings, calibration scores, productivity and output metrics, 'AI-native' ratings, and AI-token consumption—that, by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability," the attorneys wrote in the filing.
Token consumption, a measure of how extensively an employee uses AI tools, has become a proxy for general AI engagement within companies. The complaint argues that because certain employees were on approved leave, their metrics in these categories declined—making them more likely to be flagged for termination by the AI-assisted process.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a preliminary injunction preserving their employment status at Meta while an independent audit of the "algorithmically assisted selection process" is conducted and their arbitration claims are resolved.
Meta pushed back sharply on the allegations. "The claims lack merit and are not based on facts," a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI," the spokesperson added.
The lawsuit arrives nearly a month after a federal judge in California ruled against HR technology firm Workday in a separate case involving AI-powered hiring tools. In that ruling, the court determined that Workday must face claims that its AI-based job-screening services violated state and federal employee discrimination laws.
Workday denied wrongdoing in that case, stating that its AI recruiting software does not conduct hiring decisions "in California or anywhere else" and that its technology "looks only at job qualifications, not protected traits like race, age, or disability."
The two cases together signal a broadening legal challenge to the use of algorithmic and AI-assisted systems in workforce decisions—both in hiring and in layoffs—underscoring growing scrutiny from employees and courts over how automated tools intersect with workers' civil rights protections.
As companies across the technology sector increasingly rely on AI-driven metrics to evaluate and manage their workforces, the outcome of the Meta case could carry significant implications for how employers document and defend the role of automated systems in employment decisions going forward.
Marc Sabatini is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering enterprise software, cybersecurity, and the regulatory beats that shape both. He focuses on the deal flow and policy decisions that move markets.
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