Meta has been sued by 26 employees who claim its AI systems helped pick workers for the corporate chop.
The lawsuit alleges Meta used AI-driven scoring and monitoring tools to select staff for layoffs, with workers on protected medical, family, pregnancy or parental leave hit disproportionately.
“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work. Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems, including a system referred to internally as ‘Metamate,’ employee-trained ‘second-brain’ agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration, to score, rank, and select employees for inclusion on the list,” the lawsuit said.
According to Arstechnica, employees were allegedly graded on how much they used Meta’s AI tools. The complaint said Meta’s internal systems labelled workers as “AI Native,” “AI First” and “AI Enabled.”
The case appears to be the first against a major US company for allegedly using AI in layoffs. Ars Technica reported that the complaint claims Meta’s monitoring tools failed to account for disabilities and protected leave.
“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 lawsuit said.
The complaint claims Meta managers did not adjust scores for workers who took leave or requested reasonable disability accommodations. That is a rather tidy way of turning legal protections into a spreadsheet-shaped trap.
“Meta did not neutralise those inputs for protected leave; did not exclude protected-leave-takers or accommodation-seekers from the selection cohort; and did not pause the system for the individualised, leave- and accommodation-neutral review that the law requires,” the complaint alleged.
The 26 plaintiffs requested leave or disability accommodations in the 24 months before being selected for layoffs, according to the lawsuit. Their jobs are scheduled to start vanishing on 22 July 2026.
Meta denied the claims and insisted humans, rather than its shiny internal AI toys, made the calls.
“These claims lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organisational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”
