Meta workers sue over AI driven layoffs, say the system ignored medical and family leave

1:19 PM · July 16, 2026

Twenty six current and former Meta employees filed a federal lawsuit in the US District Court in Oakland, California, alleging that the company used a constellation of internal AI systems to help decide who would be cut in its May layoffs, and that those systems disproportionately targeted employees with disabilities or those on protected medical, parental, or family leave. The complaint says Meta relied on metrics such as token consumption, used internally as a proxy for how actively an employee was using AI tools, in a way that failed to account for approved leaves of absence when ranking employees for the cuts. The plaintiffs, all part of the roughly ten percent of Meta's workforce let go in the May round, allege the layoffs violated the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. A Meta spokesperson pushed back on the premise directly, saying that workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI. Legal observers note the case is among the first significant court challenges to test how much responsibility a company can offload onto automated systems when making decisions that trigger long standing employment protections, and its outcome could shape how far other companies feel comfortable leaning on AI in workforce decisions.