{"slug": "lawsuit-meta-used-ai-for-discriminatory-layoffs", "title": "Lawsuit: Meta Used AI For Discriminatory Layoffs", "summary": "Twenty-six current and former Meta employees filed a lawsuit accusing the company of using AI software to discriminate against workers with disabilities and those who took medical or family leave during mass layoffs in May. The plaintiffs allege Meta's AI-driven performance-ranking system penalized employees who exercised their legal right to take protected leave, and they are seeking a court order to halt terminations and an independent audit of the layoff selection process. Meta denied the claims, stating that workforce decisions were made by people, not AI.", "body_md": "[Sign up for the free](https://www.motherjones.com/newsletters/?mj_oac=Article_Top_No_Oligarchs)\n\n*Mother Jones Daily*.A group of 26 current and former Meta employees filed a lawsuit Monday evening accusing the tech company of using AI software to target employees with disabilities and those who took medical or family leave in its mass layoffs in May.\n\nThose layoffs were part of Meta’s plans to cut 10 percent of its staff, or [roughly 8,000 workers](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/technology/meta-layoffs-ai.html), and close about 6,000 open positions, in an effort to prioritize AI initiatives. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, also [reassigned 7,000 employees](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/meta-layoffs-ai-rcna345968) to work on AI.\n\n“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” the workers alleged [in their lawsuit](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28475884-former-employees-v-meta/#document/p1). Instead, the suit contends that the firm used “a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems” to create a performance-ranking system.\n\nThe plaintiffs stated that, by design, the productivity metrics penalized those who had used their legal right to take time away from work. All 26 employees requested or were approved to take protected leave within the past two years.\n\nAccording to the lawsuit, the AI tools Meta used to evaluate employees included, among others, a [dashboard](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/meta-video-ai-training-layoffs-video-exclusive-mci-bosworth-frenk/) that tracks their level of AI usage and [keystroke and mouse data, browser history, and messaging](https://www.wired.com/story/meta-accidentally-let-employees-access-each-others-keystroke-data/), which Meta began using [to train its own AI models](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvglyklz49jo) in April. The company announced the monitoring program in an internal post in a secondary group instead of the official employee channel and many workers did not receive an acknowledgement or consent option, the 26 employees state.\n\nIn other words, it’s alarming that Meta isn’t only using its employees’ work to train the AI tools that may eventually take their jobs—the company is allegedly applying similar tools to a discriminatory layoff process.\n\nIn a statement, Meta said the former employees’ claims were incorrect: “Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”\n\nThe former employees are asking the court to order Meta to halt their terminations and have an independent auditor review the company’s selection process for its layoffs.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/lawsuit-meta-used-ai-for-discriminatory-layoffs", "canonical_source": "https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/meta-lawsuit-ai-layoffs-medical-leave-disability-tech-termination/", "published_at": "2026-07-14 19:43:15+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-14 19:59:09.830779+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Meta", "Facebook", "Instagram", "WhatsApp", "Mother Jones"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/lawsuit-meta-used-ai-for-discriminatory-layoffs", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/lawsuit-meta-used-ai-for-discriminatory-layoffs.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/lawsuit-meta-used-ai-for-discriminatory-layoffs.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/lawsuit-meta-used-ai-for-discriminatory-layoffs.jsonld"}}