What happened
Twenty-six Meta employees filed a lawsuit in Oakland, California on Monday alleging that the company used artificial intelligence systems to "score, rank, and select employees" for layoffs rather than relying on manager judgment, and that the AI disproportionately targeted workers on medical or family leave. The lawsuit claims the AI systems relied on "performance ratings, calibration scores, productivity and output metrics"—metrics that cannot be accumulated by employees on protected leave—and that Meta did not pause the system for individualized, leave- and accommodation-neutral review.
Why it matters
The lawsuit focuses on 26 employees among the 8,000 workers (some 10 percent of Meta's workforce) the company said it would lay off in Spring while redirecting resources toward AI initiatives. All 26 plaintiffs had taken or requested protected leave, or requested or received reasonable accommodation for disability. The claim suggests that automated systems may have systematically excluded them from fair consideration, raising questions about how large technology companies implement workforce reductions.
What to watch
Meta denied the allegations through a spokesperson, stating that "workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI" and that the "claims lack merit and are not based on facts." The company is investing up to $145 billion（約23兆円） on AI investments this year, nearly twice last year's figure, as part of its infrastructure expansion.
Summaries like this, in your inbox every morning.
Meta's Spring layoffs were framed by the company as a resource redirection toward an ambitious artificial intelligence agenda. The company has committed up to $145 billion（約23兆円） to AI investments this year—nearly twice the prior year's spending—signaling the scale of its infrastructure ambitions. However, the timing of the 8,000-person workforce reduction (10 percent of Meta's staff) alongside this expansion has drawn legal scrutiny from affected employees.
The lawsuit centers on a procedural claim: that automated systems were used to make or heavily influence layoff decisions in ways that bypassed the individualized human judgment normally required by employment law, particularly when workers are on protected leave or have disability accommodations. The plaintiffs argue that the AI systems' reliance on productivity and performance metrics inherently disadvantaged those on medical or family leave, since such metrics cannot be accumulated during leave periods. Meta's defense—that people, not AI, made the decisions—does not directly address whether the company used AI-generated scores or recommendations as inputs to those human decisions, a distinction that may be central to the legal claims.
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