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Meta is facing another lawsuit, this time involving former employees who were laid off en masse this year. A total of 26 former employees have filed a lawsuit against Meta in California alleging that the company used artificial intelligence (AI) to select employees to be laid off. The AI system then targeted workers who were sick or on sick leave.
In the lawsuit, Meta also alleges that it used productivity scores and AI token usage as evaluation factors to come up with a list of employees to be laid off. The plaintiffs are seeking a court order to halt the layoffs scheduled to begin July 22 while their claims are taken to private arbitration.
The lawsuit was filed in California because there is a law prohibiting discrimination against employees who are sick, on sick leave or pregnant. Meta is also accused of failing to test its AI system for bias, violating new laws in California and New York City.
It was also revealed that Meta uses three systems to evaluate employees. The first is Metamate, an internal LLM used as a digital assistant. Second is Second Brain, a system that tracks employee communications and documents. Finally, there is a productivity score generated from scanning employee keyboard movements, screen content, emails and web browsing history.
Meta issued an official statement insisting that the allegations were baseless and stating that workforce decisions are made by humans, not AI.
Meta is starting 2026 with a left foot as its multi-billion dollar AI development efforts have yet to bear fruit and are seen lagging behind OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
A lawsuit in Texas that reached $300 million could now rise to $1.4 trillion as four other states file lawsuits alleging Meta is harmful to minors. The EC also found Facebook and Instagram to have addictive elements that violate Europe's Digital Services Act (DSA).
