Twenty-six Meta employees have filed a federal lawsuit alleging the technology company used artificial intelligence systems that disproportionately targeted workers with disabilities, medical conditions, and those on parental leave during massive layoffs earlier this year. The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Oakland, California, represents what appears to be the first legal challenge against a major U.S. technology company specifically contesting the use of AI in selecting workers for termination.
The plaintiffs, who filed anonymously and come from six states including California, New York, Florida, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, as well as Washington, D.C., were notified in May that their jobs would be eliminated beginning July 22. All 26 workers share a common characteristic: each had taken, requested, or been approved for protected medical or family leave within the previous 24 months.
According to the complaint, Meta assembled its termination list using internal AI-assisted systems rather than through direct managerial review. The company relied on a constellation of tools to score and rank employees, including “Metamate,” Meta’s large language model assistant; employee-trained “second brain” agents that tracked workers’ communications and documents; and productivity scoring systems that drew data from scanning keystrokes, screen content, emails, and browser history. The lawsuit specifically alleges that Meta considered factors such as productivity levels and AI token usage when deciding which workers to cut.
The plaintiffs contend that these metrics could not account for legitimate time away from work. Workers on protected medical or family leave naturally accumulated fewer activity signals, lower productivity scores, and reduced AI-tool usage simply because they were legally absent from their desks. The AI systems, according to the complaint, penalized them for exercising rights that federal law explicitly protects. By not excluding workers with protected leave status from the selection process, Meta’s systems effectively funneled employees with disabilities and those caring for family members onto the termination list at disproportionate rates.
Meta’s May layoffs represented a sweeping reorganization. The company cut approximately 10 percent of its global workforce, eliminating roughly 8,000 jobs beginning May 20, while simultaneously reassigning about 7,000 employees to newly created teams focused on artificial intelligence work. The company presented the reductions as necessary to fund its aggressive pivot toward AI development and to flatten management layers.
The legal claims extend beyond federal disability and family leave protections. The plaintiffs accuse Meta of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and related state employment laws. They also claim Meta failed to test its AI systems for bias in violation of recently adopted California and New York City laws that regulate the use of artificial intelligence in employment decisions.
The workers are seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the planned terminations while they pursue their claims through private arbitration. Meta’s employment agreements require individual workers to arbitrate disputes privately, though the plaintiffs argue these agreements do not prevent them from seeking temporary court relief to prevent irreparable harm.
Meta has firmly rejected the allegations. A company spokesperson stated that the claims lack merit and are not based on facts, emphasizing that “workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.” The company contends that human employees, not automated systems, made final decisions about which workers to terminate.
The lawsuit arrives as courts and regulators worldwide grapple with how existing employment law applies when companies deploy algorithmic systems in workforce decisions. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has stated that existing anti-discrimination law applies when employers use AI in hiring, promotion, and termination decisions. However, legal experts have cautioned that AI tools in human resources can reproduce and amplify human bias rather than eliminate it, particularly when they rely on metrics that fail to account for protected absences.
This is not Meta’s first discrimination lawsuit connected to its 2026 layoffs. A separate lawsuit filed earlier this year alleged that the company’s cuts disproportionately affected workers over age 50, claiming they were laid off at rates 2.5 times higher than younger employees during an earlier February 2025 workforce reduction.
Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has said he does not expect additional companywide layoffs for the remainder of 2026. The company has been redirecting resources toward artificial intelligence as a strategic priority, with Zuckerberg emphasizing in internal communications that success in the competitive AI landscape is not guaranteed and requires significant organizational restructuring.