Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta faces a federal lawsuit from 26 employees who claim the company’s AI systems targeted workers on medical, parental, or family leave for termination as part of the company’s massive layoff.
ABC News reports that the lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in Oakland, California, challenges Meta’s recent workforce reduction that affected approximately 8,000 employees, representing about 10 percent of the company’s total workforce. The plaintiffs allege that Meta’s selection process for the May layoffs relied heavily on AI systems that inherently disadvantaged employees exercising their rights to protected leave.
According to the complaint, Meta utilized various technological tools to determine which employees would be terminated, including internal artificial intelligence systems, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance rankings. The lawsuit contends that these measurement systems fundamentally cannot account for employees who are absent due to legally protected medical or family leave, or whose work output is reduced because of a disability.
The lawsuit asserts that Meta failed to adjust these automated scoring systems to account for protected leave periods and did not provide the individualized, leave-neutral review required by law. This alleged oversight resulted in workers on protected medical or family leave being disproportionately selected for layoffs compared to their colleagues.
All 26 plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who are filing anonymously, took protected leave and either requested or received reasonable accommodations for disabilities. While they have been notified of their terminations, they remain employed by Meta as of the filing date, with their separations scheduled to begin on July 22.
The circumstances described in the lawsuit include multiple types of protected leave. Many employees took pregnancy or parental leave, during which their measured work output would naturally be reduced or nonexistent. Other employees took medical leave for serious health conditions. In one instance, an employee disclosed a serious health condition and disability that was approved by Meta’s own healthcare provider. However, the lawsuit claims this employee was discouraged from taking the approved leave by a manager who warned that doing so would increase his likelihood of being selected for the anticipated layoffs. The lawsuit further alleges that Meta offered no accommodation for his disability.
Meta has firmly denied the allegations. In a statement to Breitbart News, the company said, “The claims lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”
The lawsuit invokes multiple federal and state laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Additionally, the complaint references the legal concept of disparate impact liability, which allows for discrimination claims when facially neutral policies disproportionately harm protected classes of workers.
In a statement, the plaintiffs’ lawyers emphasized that the lawsuit seeks to preserve the status quo and keep the workers employed pending arbitration. They argue that once the separations become final, the consequences are irreversible, including loss of employer-subsidized health coverage during pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and active medical treatment, extinguished time-bound leave rights, forfeited unvested equity, and triggered immigration consequences.
Read more at ABC News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.