Dozens of Meta employees have sued the social media company in federal court in the northern district of California, alleging that it used artificial intelligence tools to tag workers for mass layoffs after they asked for protected leave, maternity leave or disability accommodation. The complaint lands in the middle of Meta’s workforce reduction of about 8,000 employees earlier this year. The company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is now accused of turning its own internal systems into a sorting machine for dismissal.
The Algorithmic Boss
The 71-page complaint says Meta used a “constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems”, including AI performance ratings and keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, to pinpoint who to lay off. The plaintiffs say the company used AI systems “to score, rank and select employees for inclusion on the list”. That language matters. It describes a workplace where management doesn’t just supervise labour; it digitises it, measures it, and then hands the result to the axe.
The suit also says, “Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work.” That line cuts through the usual corporate fog. The workers’ claim is that the people doing the work were not judged by people who understood it, but by systems built to extract, compare and discard.
The plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary court ruling to stop Meta from finalizing the layoffs while they pursue their claims. They are also seeking relief that could include reinstatement, back pay, lost equity, benefits and other damages. For now, the company says the process keeps moving. The workers say the clock is already running.
Leave, Then Punishment
The lawsuit alleges that Meta’s AI tools gather data on employees’ performance rankings, productivity and other metrics, and that those inputs do not exist when workers are on medical or family leave. For people with disabilities, the complaint says, those metrics might be reduced. “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,” the complaint says.
One of the plaintiffs is a scientist who was on approved pre-birth pregnancy leave and was notified of her layoff just two days before she gave birth. Another plaintiff is an engineer who said he received a “lowered rating” because of time he took off for an injury. Another, a manager on medical leave, said he was let go 16 days into his time off. The pattern is plain enough without any corporate gloss. Leave becomes vulnerability. Vulnerability becomes a score. The score becomes a firing list.
Meta disputed the allegations. A spokesperson said in an email: “These claims lack merit and are not based on facts,” and added, “Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.” The company’s denial sits beside the complaint’s description of AI ratings, monitoring data and selection systems. The gap is the story.
Surveillance at Work, Secrecy at the Top
Meta introduced its AI employee-monitoring program earlier this year. It was designed to capture workers’ keystrokes, mouse activity, browser history, along with messages, emails and location data on company devices. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, said the idea was to train the company’s AI systems on its employees’ behaviors. “The AI models learn from watching really smart people do things,” Zuckerberg said in an internal meeting, according to the Information. “The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks.”
The lawsuit says Meta quietly launched the monitoring program without employee buy-in. According to the complaint, Meta told employees about it through a “low-visibility internal post – made by an engineer rather than a senior leader”. On at least some teams, employees received no consent or acknowledgment prompt at all, and, at least initially, there was no way to opt out. The company watched first. It asked questions later, if at all.
Employee backlash quickly racked up over the last few months, prompting Zuckerberg to announce that he was pausing the program in June. His about-face came after more than 1,600 employees signed a petition saying the program violated their privacy. Even there, the machinery only paused after enough workers pushed back to make silence expensive.
In Monday’s suit, lawyers for the plaintiffs asked the court to immediately approve an independent audit into Meta’s AI tools. They say it would provide clarification into why the 26 workers, who were on leave or approved for disability accommodation, were let go. “Meta deliberately kept the mechanics of its selection process secret from its employees,” the lawyers said in an emailed statement.
The plaintiffs are still Meta employees until 22 July, when their termination is set to begin, according to the lawyers. Citing retaliation concerns, the attorneys are asking the judge to allow the plaintiffs to remain anonymous and for a court-order to preserve the workers’ employment status while arbitration is pending. “Once these separations are final, the harms are irreversible: employer-subsidized health coverage lost during pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and active medical treatment; time-bound leave rights extinguished; unvested equity forfeited; and immigration consequences triggered,” the lawyers said. That last line is the corporate order in miniature: health, leave, pay, equity and immigration all tied to the same employment leash, all cut by the same hand.