Written by Barbara Ortutei and Alexandra Olsson
A group of 26 Meta employees has sued the company, alleging that it uses artificial intelligence systems to select employees for termination and unfairly targets those on medical, parental, and family leave.
They represent about 10% of its 8,000 employees and will be laid off in May, Meta announced. The lawsuit, filed late Monday in federal court in Oakland, California, alleges the company used internal AI systems, keystroke and activity monitoring data, an AI token usage dashboard, and algorithm-assisted performance rankings to determine who should be fired.
Many of these scores and ratings “by design cannot be accumulated by employees who are on protected medical or family leave, or who are less productive due to a disability,” the lawsuit states. According to the complaint, Meta did not consider protected leave when considering employee scores and “failed to pause the system for independent review of individual leave and accommodations as required by law.”
As a result, people on protected medical and family leave were unfairly singled out for termination, the lawsuit says. Each of the 26 anonymous employees in the lawsuit received protected leave and requested or received reasonable disability accommodations. Although they have been notified of their termination, all 26 remain employed by Meta, with separations scheduled to begin on July 22nd.
Many employees took parental leave
Many of the employees involved in the lawsuit took pregnancy or paternity leave, but did not work during that time, resulting in a decrease in measured output. Some took medical leave. One of them disclosed a “serious health condition and disability” and was approved by Meta’s own medical provider. But he was “dissuaded and dissuaded from taking time off by his manager,” but was warned that doing so would result in him being singled out for anticipated termination, according to the complaint. According to the lawsuit, Mehta did not provide any accommodations for her disability.
Mehta said in a statement that the claims are “unsubstantiated and not based in fact. Employee management and organizational decisions were and are made by humans, not AI.”
Approximately half of the plaintiffs took leave for nursing care or pregnancy-related reasons. Eight were women who took maternity or pregnancy-related leave, four were men who took parental leave, and one woman took bereavement leave to care for a family member.
The complaint alleges that the termination violated multiple state and federal laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act.
The lawsuit cites “disparate impact”
The complaint also refers to “disparate influence liability,” a long-standing civil rights concept that President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to abandon. Disparate impact, codified in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, states that facially neutral policies and practices can be discriminatory if they impose a disproportionate burden on protected class workers and are not necessary for the job.
The Trump administration ordered federal agencies to deprioritize disparate impact enforcement, arguing that its use undermines “meritocracy” and reinforces the assumption that racial and gender disparities in the workforce are the result of discrimination. The order prompted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to drop discrimination lawsuits on behalf of some workers.
But the case against Meta underscores how companies remain vulnerable to lawsuits with disparate consequences in the age of AI, even as the Trump administration seeks to stamp out enforcement. Even if the EEOC dismisses a complaint, workers are free to file such lawsuits themselves, and some state laws specifically prohibit disparate impact discrimination.
In the lawsuit against Meta, plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the company’s “algorithm-assisted selection process favors women over men by systematically recording things like absenteeism as poor performance.” Lawyers say this is because women disproportionately take pregnancy and family care leave. The lawsuit cites Title VII’s prohibition on disparate impact employment practices and the Supreme Court’s landmark 1971 decision recognizing this principle.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said in a statement that the lawsuit seeks to maintain the status quo to keep employees employed pending arbitration. That’s because “once separation is finalized, the harm is irreversible: loss of employer-subsidized health insurance during pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and active treatment, loss of time-limited leave entitlements, forfeiture of unentitled rights, and immigration consequences.”
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