Meta sued over alleged AI bias in major layoffs

Employees say Meta used biased AI to pick who got cut

Twenty-six anonymous Meta employees have filed a lawsuit accusing the company of using “inherently discriminatory” AI-powered systems to decide who was laid off in a recent mass job cut.

In May, Meta laid off 8,000 employees, about 10% of its workforce, as part of a cost-cutting push tied to what the company described as preparing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on artificial intelligence development.

The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District Court of California, alleges Meta did not rely on managers' judgment when assembling the termination list.

“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” the complaint said.

Alleged AI systems behind the layoff decisions

According to the complaint, Meta instead leaned on “a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems” to “score, rank, and select employees” for layoffs. The filing says those systems included:

• Metamate, an internal large-language model assistant described as a “second brain,” trained on employee communications and documents
• Algorithmic productivity scores based on metrics like keystrokes, browser history, and email data
• AI-assisted performance review tools
• Internal records of AI token consumption

The plaintiffs argue that this mix of metrics and tooling effectively automated key parts of the layoff decision process.

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Claims of discrimination against workers on leave

The lawsuit centers on how these systems allegedly treated employees who took protected leave. By emphasizing keystrokes, productivity scores, and AI token usage, the systems allegedly disadvantaged workers who had reduced output because of disabilities or protected medical or family leave.

The filing says Meta was alerted to the issue but did not pause or adjust the systems to allow for a more neutral review.

“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 lawsuit claims.

According to the complaint, multiple employees on maternity leave were selected for layoff, including a scientist two days away from giving birth. Another plaintiff, a manager on approved pregnancy-related disability leave, was allegedly the only person on her team chosen for termination by the system.

Workers seek to halt July 22 layoffs

The 26 plaintiffs were notified in May that their jobs would be eliminated starting on July 22. They are now asking the court for a preliminary ruling blocking Meta from completing the layoffs on that date while they pursue their claims.

Their contracts, they say, require them to arbitrate workplace disputes individually, but they argue those arbitration provisions do not apply to requests for temporary relief such as a pause on the layoffs.

Meta denies AI made the decisions

Meta has rejected the allegations and pushed back on the core claim that software, rather than people, determined who was laid off.

“These claims lack merit and are not based on facts,” a Meta spokesperson told Gizmodo. “Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”

Follows earlier discrimination suit over February 2025 cuts

This is not the first time Meta’s layoff processes have been challenged. Earlier this year, the company was hit with a separate discrimination lawsuit from a former employee who alleged older workers were disproportionately targeted in February 2025 layoffs that cut 5% of its workforce.

At that time, Meta said the job cuts were aimed at its lowest performers.

One of the engineers in the new lawsuit also claims “he was aware that employees who took paternity leave had been laid off” in the February 2025 reductions as well.

The new case now puts Meta’s internal scoring systems and their interaction with protected leave directly under the microscope.