The dispute centers on a series of staff reductions from May, when Meta moved to eliminate roughly 8,000 positions, or 10 percent of its workforce. According to the filing, the company relied on a "constellation" of automated systems—including the Metamate assistant and various AI-driven dashboards—to score and rank employees for the chopping block. The suit argues these tools systematically disadvantaged those on leave, as the algorithms did not adjust for periods of inactivity or protected status.
Former Meta staff sue over AI-driven layoff bias
Twenty-six former Meta employees have filed a lawsuit alleging the company weaponized internal AI tools to target staff on medical or parental leave for termination. The plaintiffs contend that automated performance rankings failed to account for protected absences, effectively penalizing workers for exercising their legal rights to time off.
Meta has dismissed the allegations as baseless. Spokesperson Tracy Clayton stated that all workforce management decisions were handled by human managers rather than automated processes. The lawsuit now seeks to prove that the reliance on these internal tools violated federal and state protections against retaliation for taking legally mandated leave.
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