Dozens of Meta employees are suing, saying the use of AI in layoffs affects workers on protected leave
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A group of 26 Meta employees sued the company, saying it uses artificial intelligence systems to select people to be laid off, unfairly targeting those on medical, parental or family leave.
They are among the 8,000 workers, or about 10 percent of its workforce, that Meta said it will lay off in May. The lawsuit, filed late Monday in federal court in Oakland, Calif., says the company uses internal AI systems, key data and job monitoring data, AI token usage dashboards and algorithm-assisted performance ratings, among other methods, to decide who to lay off.
Many of these points and ratings “by design, cannot be accrued by an employee on protected medical or family leave, or the result of which is reduced disability,” the lawsuit says.
Meta, according to the lawsuit, did not take protected leave into account when considering employee scores and “did not establish a system of neutral, leave- and accommodation-required reviews.”
As a result, people on protected medical or family leave were unfairly singled out for layoffs, the lawsuit said. Each of the 26 employees named in the lawsuit took protected leave, or requested or received a reasonable disability accommodation.
Despite being notified of their layoffs, all 26 are still employed by Meta, and the separation will begin on July 22.
Many workers were on parental leave
Most of the workers in the case took maternity or parental leave, during which time they would not have worked and thus reduced their estimated effect. Some have taken medical leave – one disclosed a “serious health condition and disability” endorsed by Meta's own provider.
But according to the lawsuit, he was “discouraged and dissuaded from taking this leave by a supervisor” who warned that doing so would result in his expected reassignment. Meta did not provide accommodations because of his disability, the lawsuit said.
Tech Block, which owns the payment platform Square, has announced that it will lay off thousands of employees due to the power of artificial intelligence. But some industry watchers say blaming AI would be an easy excuse.
Meta said in a statement that these claims “have no merit and are not based on facts. Human resource management and organizational decisions are made and made by humans, not AI.”
About half of the claimants said they took leave for caregiving or pregnancy-related reasons. Eight were women who had taken maternity or pregnancy-related leave, four were men who had taken paternity leave and one was a woman who had taken leave to care for a family member and later bereavement leave.
The lawsuit alleges the layoffs violated several state and federal laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Fairness to Pregnant Workers Act.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said in a statement that the lawsuit asks for one thing – to maintain the status quo to keep workers employed pending arbitration.
This is because “once this separation is over, the damage is irreparable: lost employer-sponsored health care during pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and active medical care; limited leave rights are extinguished; unvested equity is forfeited; and immigration consequences result.”
