News summary produced by Claude AI
A group of 26 Meta employees filed a federal lawsuit challenging the company’s use of artificial intelligence in selecting workers for termination. The complaint, filed Monday in California federal court, contends that Meta employed multiple AI systems to score and rank workers for inclusion in a layoff affecting approximately 8,000 employees earlier this year.
The plaintiffs claim that Meta’s AI tools gathered performance metrics, productivity data and activity-monitoring information to identify termination candidates. According to the lawsuit, these systems created a disadvantage for employees on medical, family or disability leave, as the absence of performance data during protected leave periods resulted in lower scores. The complaint alleges that workers exercising their legal rights to protected leave were disproportionately selected for termination based on flawed algorithmic scoring.
Specific cases cited in the lawsuit include a scientist notified of termination two days before giving birth and an engineer who received a lower performance rating due to injury-related time off. The workers seek preliminary court action to halt finalizations of their layoffs, along with potential reinstatement, back pay and other damages.
Meta introduced the employee-monitoring program earlier this year to capture keystroke and activity data on company devices, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating the collected information would train AI systems. However, the program drew significant employee resistance, with over 1,600 workers signing a petition citing privacy violations. Zuckerberg announced a pause of the initiative in June. A Meta spokesperson denied the lawsuit’s allegations, stating that personnel decisions were made by people rather than AI systems.
The plaintiffs’ legal team has requested an independent audit of Meta’s AI tools and sought to preserve workers’ employment status pending arbitration. The termination notices were scheduled to take effect on 22 July, according to the suit.