26 former Meta employees are suing the company for allegedly using biased AI tools that “unfairly singled out” people who took medical leave as layoffs. Reuters reports. All of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were affected by Meta’s latest round of layoffs, which cut about 8,000 employees in hopes of ending the company’s investments in AI and data center infrastructure.
Meta is accused of using a “constellation of artificial intelligence systems” to choose which employees should be cut. Those reportedly include an internal AI assistant called “Metamate,” employee-trained “second brain” agents, AI token usage dashboards and “keystroke- and activity-monitoring data.” The alleged goal was to identify and rate employees based on things like their performance and productivity, but also whether they are “AI native” and how many AI tokens they use. The problem, the lawsuit claims, is that Meta’s system did not take into account workers on family or medical leave, or their disability may affect their release, despite being in situations where they cannot use multiple tokens or interact with other AI tools.
Engadget asked Meta to comment on the case and its use of AI. In the statement given Reutersthe company said the suit has no merit since layoffs always involve public opinion. “Human resource management and organizational decisions are made and executed by humans, not AI,” Meta said.
Key to the lawsuit’s argument, each of the plaintiffs “took, requested, or was authorized to take legally protected leave; attempted to take protected leave and was thwarted; or requested or received a reasonable disability accommodation,” within 24 months of the layoff. Laws such as the Family and Medical Leave Act expressly prohibit companies from considering employees taking protected leave as part of their employment decisions. At the federal level, California’s Family Rights Act also prohibits it, and the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act “prohibits the use of an automated decision system that produces differential discrimination on the basis of disability or sex, including pregnancy.”
The former employees are asking the court to prevent Meta from completing its layoffs “pending an independent review of the algorithmically assisted selection process.” Due to the terms of Meta’s employment contract, plaintiffs also intend to pursue their claims in arbitration.
Reuters first reported that Meta was recording its employees’ keystrokes, mouse movements and clicks to train AI in April 2026. Besides sounding invasive and scary, the program reportedly violated European Union privacy laws. Meta chose to pause the AI training program when it became clear that secret conversations and transcripts the system recorded were accessible to employees. Considering the reputation of the company’s original plan, the idea that the same surveillance data may have been used to make the layoffs isn’t particularly surprising.
