Dozens of Meta employees sue, allege AI use for layoffs affects workers on protected leave
Dozens of Meta employees have filed a lawsuit alleging that the company used AI-driven performance monitoring to unfairly target workers on protected medical or family leave for layoffs. The plaintiffs claim that the automated systems failed to account for legally mandated leave, resulting in discriminatory selection processes.
Why it matters
This case highlights the growing legal and ethical challenges surrounding the use of algorithmic management and AI in corporate human resources and workforce reduction decisions.
They are among the 8,000 employees, or about 10 per cent of its workforce, Meta said it would lay off in May. The lawsuit filed late Monday in federal court in Oakland, Calif., claims the company used internal AI systems, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI token-usage dashboards and algorithmically assisted performance rankings, among other methods, to determine who would be laid off.
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Many of these scores and ratings "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 lawsuit says.
Meta, according to the lawsuit, did not account for protected leave when taking employees' scores into account and "did not pause the system for the individualized, leave- and accommodation-neutral review that the law requires."
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