Meta Faces Lawsuit Regarding Claims Its AI Systems Targeted Employees With Disabilities When It Reduced Workforce – AfroTech

Meta is facing a lawsuit over its alleged use of AI in layoffs.

KRON4 reports that the tech giant has been sued by 26 Meta employees living in California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Oakland, CA, alleges that the company’s AI systems targeted employees with disabilities or those who had taken medical leave within the past 24 months when it reduced its workforce this year.

As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Meta announced in January that it would reduce its workforce by an estimated 10%, affecting nearly 8,000 employees. The plaintiffs allege the reduction was driven by a decision to position Meta as an “AI-first” company, according to Courthouse News Service.

The plaintiffs argue that AI-evaluated metrics, including performance ratings and productivity, placed employees with disabilities or those who took medical leave at a disadvantage. They believe Meta’s actions violate state-protected leave laws, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, per Courthouse News Service.

“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” The 71-page complaint read. “Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems — including a system referred to internally as ‘Metamate,’ employee-trained ‘second-brain’ agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration — to score, rank and select employees for inclusion on the list.”

“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 plaintiffs continued in the complaint.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to bar Meta from finalizing the layoffs while the dispute proceeds through private arbitration.

A Meta spokesperson has responded to the allegations, telling AFROTECH™, “These claims lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”