Starting on May 20, 2026, Meta began cutting roughly 10% of its workforce — about 8,000 employees. For the workers who received separation notices, what made it especially unsettling was how the decisions were supposedly made.
In a 71-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, 26 current and former employees allege that Meta didn't rely on manager judgment to build its layoff list. Instead, they claim, the company used an internal AI system called 'Metamate' that combined multiple data streams: keystroke and activity monitoring, an AI token usage dashboard, algorithm-assisted performance rankings, and calibration tools — all feeding into a scoring system that ranked who stayed and who went.
The core of the lawsuit is that this algorithmic approach disproportionately harmed workers on protected leave. Employees on medical leave, parental leave, or family care leave naturally had lower activity metrics, fewer AI tokens used, and lower productivity scores during their time away. The AI system, the plaintiffs argue, penalized them for taking leave they were legally entitled to — potentially violating federal and state anti-discrimination laws including the FMLA and ADA.
One plaintiff described returning from medical leave only to find herself on the layoff list, with no manager able to explain why her performance had been rated so poorly during a period when she wasn't even working.
Meta has denied the allegations, stating that layoff decisions were made by humans, not AI. But the complaint details specific internal tools and dashboards that the company built and deployed, and points to the company's own public statements about using AI for workforce management.
The case is the latest in a wave of legal challenges to AI-driven employment decisions. EU regulations already classify AI used in hiring and firing as high-risk under the AI Act, requiring transparency and human oversight. In the U.S., where at-will employment is the norm, workers have fewer protections — unless the AI system has a disparate impact on a protected class, which is exactly what these 26 employees are alleging.
For the broader workforce, the case raises an uncomfortable question: if an algorithm decides you're expendable, who do you appeal to? When the person making the decision about your career isn't a person at all, accountability disappears.