Meta, the parent company of popular social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, was just sued over its alleged use of artificial intelligence-powered tools to fire employees.
A complaint against the high-profile tech company was filed Monday in the United States District Court of the Northern District of California, Oakland Division. Plaintiffs include 26 current and former Meta employees across multiple states. Per the suit, the layoffs are not finalized and the employees are expected to start losing their jobs on July 22.
They claim that Meta “did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” when it conducted mass layoffs this year. Instead, they said it used AI tools (including a system referred to as “Metamate”) “to score, rank, and select employees for inclusion on the list.”
Through this AI-assisted process, Meta failed to account for employees protected by medical or family leave, or “whose output is reduced by a disability,” the lawsuit claims. One employee mentioned in the suit was allegedly selected the day before her water broke while she was on pre-birth pregnancy leave.
Lumen Law Center, one of the firms listed as legal representation for the plaintiffs, said earlier this year that it was investigating Meta’s use of AI systems “against its own workforce” using tools like “pervasive keystroke and productivity monitoring.”
According to Ars Technica, Meta announced May 2026 layoffs after an internal memo in which Chief People Officer Janelle Gale told staff that Meta would cut about 10% of employees and stop hiring for about 6,000 open roles. These cuts came as Meta “reported record revenue the prior month and committed to spending between $125 billion and $145 billion – more than double its 2025 expenditure – on artificial intelligence in 2026,” the lawsuit said.
Meta said in a statement sent to Ars Technica that: “These claims lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”
The company didn’t provide any other comment on the lawsuit, the outlet said. Reuters said that the suit is “the first against a major U.S. company to challenge the alleged use of AI in conducting layoffs.”
Plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that would require Meta to preserve the employees’ jobs and protected leave status and to conduct an audit of the layoff selection process. They are also seeking an order that would require Meta to preserve all data, models, and documents related to the layoffs “and the algorithmically assisted selection process.”
