'AI Decided Who Got Fired': Meta Sued Over Claims AI Selected Workers on Maternity and Medical Leave for Layoffs

Twenty-six people say an algorithm decided their careers were over before a single manager did. The former Meta Platforms employees filed a federal lawsuit in Oakland, California, late on 13 July 2026, alleging the company used a network of internal artificial intelligence tools to score, rank and select staff for mass layoffs, and that the system disproportionately swept up workers with disabilities or those who had taken medical or family leave.

The plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the layoffs, which were due to take effect on 22 July, while their underlying claims proceed through private arbitration. Meta has denied the allegations outright.

Inside the Complaint's Allegations

According to the 71-page complaint, obtained and published by Courthouse News Service, the plaintiffs argue Meta's termination list was not built through managers' direct judgement of the work. Instead, the filing states that Meta used a 'constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems', including an internal tool called 'Metamate', employee-trained 'second-brain' agents, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance calibration, to score and rank employees for the list.

The complaint alleges these scoring inputs were structurally incapable of capturing employees on protected leave. Reporting on the filing noted that the tools relied on performance ratings, calibration scores, output metrics and AI-token consumption, factors that by design cannot be accumulated by someone on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability.

The plaintiffs argue the consequence was foreseeable discrimination, not incidental fallout. Employees who took protected leave were disproportionately selected for layoff, the lawsuit alleges, because the scoring not only failed to account for those leaves but effectively penalised staff for exercising a legal right to take them.

Who Is Suing and What They Want

The 26 plaintiffs filed anonymously and are drawn from California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington state and Washington, D.C. They accuse Meta of violating federal and state laws that prohibit discrimination or retaliation against employees who have disabilities, take medical leave, or are pregnant, and separately allege that Meta failed to test its AI systems for bias, as required under recently adopted California and New York City laws.

Rather than seeking damages through the courts immediately, the plaintiffs are asking a judge for narrower, urgent relief. Because Meta's employment agreements require staff to arbitrate workplace disputes individually, the plaintiffs argue that requirement does not extend to requests for temporary emergency relief, and on that basis they are seeking a preliminary court order blocking Meta from completing the layoffs while their claims proceed in arbitration.

The case lands squarely inside Meta's broader restructuring. The company announced plans earlier this year to cut around 10 per cent of its global workforce, close to 8,000 people, with the first round of cuts beginning in May and further reductions flagged for later in the year. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has since said he does not expect further company-wide layoffs this year, as the company redirects the workforce toward AI investment and embeds AI agents into both its products and its internal working methods.

Meta's Response and the Wider Stakes

Meta has rejected the claims in unambiguous terms. A company spokesperson told Reuters the allegations lack merit, stating plainly that workforce management and organisational decisions were and are made by people, not AI. The company had not filed a formal court response at the time the lawsuit became public.

The case is among the first of its kind to test how far employment discrimination law reaches into automated workforce-management tools. Legal commentary on the filing has framed it as a novel test of whether AI-driven scoring systems used in mass layoffs can trigger the same liability as a biased human manager, particularly as more employers lean on algorithmic tools to make consequential staffing decisions at scale.

A ruling on the plaintiffs' request to pause the layoffs is expected in the coming weeks, and it could shape how far companies can lean on algorithms when deciding whose job survives.