26 Meta employees sue, claiming AI, not humans, decided who got laid off

[Gerrard]

Twenty six current and former Meta employees have sued the company in federal court in Oakland, alleging that its May 2026 round of roughly 8,000 layoffs, about 10 percent of its workforce, disproportionately targeted people who had taken protected medical, parental or family leave, because an internal AI system failed to account for that leave when scoring who to cut

The lawsuit alleges Meta used a constellation of internal AI systems, including keystroke and activity monitoring data, AI token usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance rankings, to determine who would be laid off. The core problem, according to the complaint, is that 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, meaning the system effectively penalized people for exercising legal rights it was never adjusted to recognize

Nearly half the plaintiffs say their termination followed directly from taking maternity, parental, or caregiving related leave. Eight are women who had taken maternity or pregnancy related leave, four are men who took parental leave, and one took leave to care for a family member and later for bereavement. One particularly stark detail from the complaint, a scientist was notified her role had been eliminated while on approved pre birth maternity leave, the day before her water broke. Another plaintiff says he disclosed a serious health condition approved by Meta's own provider, but was discouraged from actually taking the leave by a manager who warned doing so would get him selected for the anticipated layoffs, and Meta offered no accommodation for his disability regardless

Meta has firmly denied the AI framing specifically, telling Reuters and CNBC that workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI, and that the claims lack merit and aren't based on facts. The case lands just weeks after a federal judge in California ruled against HR software company Workday in a separate lawsuit over AI's use in hiring decisions, adding to a growing body of case law testing exactly how existing discrimination and disability protections apply once an algorithm, rather than a named human manager, is doing the actual scoring and ranking

Current and former employees sue Meta, alleging discrimination in using AI to conduct layoffswww.cnbc.com

[TeddyWhelan]

The detail about a scientist being told her role was eliminated the day before her water broke is genuinely gutting to read regardless of how the legal case ultimately resolves

[AntMan]

Meta's defense that people, not AI, made the decisions might actually be legally significant here, if it's true that human managers reviewed and approved the AI's rankings rather than rubber stamping them automatically, that changes the liability picture a lot

[WWEHarry78]

Scoring systems that structurally can't be met by someone on protected leave is the kind of design flaw that feels almost inevitable once you build a system purely around continuous output metrics without building in exceptions

[VoidRanger24]

The Workday ruling landing just weeks before this lawsuit was filed suggests plaintiffs' lawyers are clearly building on that precedent, this is becoming a genuine and fast growing area of employment law