Former Meta workers sue over AI-driven layoff targeting of employees on leave

A cohort of 26 former Meta employees has filed suit accusing the company of deploying AI systems to systematically identify and lay off workers who were absent on parental or medical leave, potentially breaching federal and state protections for employees exercising such rights.

The Allegations#

According to the lawsuit, Meta relied on a suite of internal AI tools—including an assistant known as Metamate, machine-learning agents trained on employee data, and dashboards tracking AI usage metrics—to score and rank workers for termination. The former employees contend that this system's ranking algorithms did not account for workers on protected leave, effectively penalizing them for exercising statutory rights. In their words, "the result was that employees who took protected leaves were disproportionately selected for layoff, based on scoring that not only failed to account for their protected leaves, but in effect penalized the employees for exercising their legal rights to these leaves."

Context of the Layoffs#

The dismissals occurred in May as part of a broader workforce reduction in which Meta cut roughly 10 percent of its headcount—approximately 8,000 positions.

Meta's Response#

A Meta spokesperson disputed the allegations, stating in a message to The Verge that "these claims lack merit and are not based on facts," and emphasized that "workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI."

The case centers on whether automated decision-making systems can circumvent protections designed to shield workers from retaliation for taking lawful leave.