Twenty-six current and former Meta employees filed a lawsuit on Monday in federal court in the Northern District of California alleging the company used internal AI tools to select workers for layoffs — and that the systems disproportionately penalized employees who had taken medical, parental, or disability leave 12.
The complaint centers on Meta's workforce reduction of approximately 8,000 employees earlier this year 12. The plaintiffs allege that Meta relied on what the suit calls a "constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems," including AI performance ratings, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, and employee-monitoring dashboards, to score and rank workers before selecting them for termination 12.
According to the complaint, the process used metrics such as work output, software development activity, and AI tool usage — measurements that employees could not accrue while on protected leave 1. By not adjusting those metrics for time away, the suit alleges, Meta effectively recorded medical leave, maternity leave, and disability-related reductions in output as underperformance 1.
The lawsuit specifically names several internal AI systems. Among them is Metamate, Meta's internal AI chatbot, as well as AI usage dashboards and employee-trained "second-brain" agents 1. The suit alleges these tools were part of the scoring apparatus used to build termination lists.
"Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work," the complaint states 1. Instead, the plaintiffs allege, the company relied on automated and semi-automated systems to make layoff determinations.
A Meta spokesperson said the "claims lack merit and are not based on facts" 1.
The case arrives as Meta continues to invest heavily in AI across its product and internal operations. The company recently launched Muse Spark 1.1, a major update to its flagship AI model targeting agentic coding and automation workloads ctx.
[ANALYSIS] The lawsuit raises a specific legal question about whether AI-driven performance metrics, when applied without adjustment for legally protected absences, can constitute discrimination under employment law. The allegations describe a scenario in which the same AI tools a company deploys to boost productivity become the mechanism by which workers exercising statutory leave rights are flagged as underperformers.
[ANALYSIS] The case also highlights the tension between employer surveillance infrastructure — keystroke monitoring, activity tracking, AI usage dashboards — and the protections afforded to employees on medical or parental leave. If the allegations are substantiated, the practical effect would be that Meta's internal AI stack functioned as a proxy for leave status in layoff decisions.
Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp 2.