Employees sue Meta, claiming AI used in layoffs targeted workers on medical and parental leave

More than two dozen Meta employees filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming it used artificial intelligence to choose which people would be laid off, which they claim disproportionately targeted those on medical, parental and family leave. 

The 26 employees were among the 8,000 employees the company said it would lay off in May. The lawsuit, which was filed this week in federal court in Oakland, California, argues that the company used internal AI systems, keystroke and activity monitoring data, and other methods to determine who would be laid off. 

The scores and ratings, the lawsuit argues, by the system's design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability. Meta didn't account for these factors when taking employees' scores into account, the Associated Press reported. 

Since the system didn't factor in protected statuses and accommodation-neutral review, it failed to do as the law requires, according to the lawsuit. As a result, the system disproportionately selected people on protected family or medical leave for layoffs, the lawsuit says. 

The 26 anonymous employees have been notified of their layoffs, and their separations are to begin on July 22. 

In a statement, Meta said that the employees' claims “lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”