Meta laid of thousands to prioritize AI. Former employees say AI was used to fire them.

Two months after a massive workforce cut that eliminated 8,000 jobs globally, 26 former Meta employees say the company used artificial intelligence to flag them for dismissal, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday.

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In the , the plaintiffs say Meta scored and ranked employees using an internal AI tool, eventually using the metrics to decide who to include in the workforce reduction that included hundreds of Bay Area workers. The metrics allegedly included data that could not be accumulated by people on medical or family leave, including key strokes, activity monitoring and AI token usage. The lawsuit further alleges that because employees on leave could not increase productivity scores, employees taking the legally protected leaves of absence were disproportionately laid off.

“These claims lack merit and are not based on facts,” Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton told SFGATE in a statement Wednesday. “Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”

All 26 plaintiffs, who span offices in California, Illinois, Washington state, New York, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Florida, took some type of company-approved, protected leave, applied for leave, or applied for and received accommodation for a disability within the two years before their termination, according to the complaint. Twelve of the plaintiffs worked in California, several of whom were either actively on or recently approved for leave before they were laid off, the lawsuit alleges. The plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary injunction to reinstate their jobs while litigation proceeds. 

Federal and California state employment law prohibits companies from taking protected leave into account when evaluating employee performance. However, one California plaintiff, identified only as Doe 6, alleges that a manager explicitly tied his performance to a medical absence he took from May to December 2025. 

The lawsuit references written messages from July 2025, from his manager to him, that say there weren’t “enough signals to gauge [him] operating at ic levels with [his] broken time.” The manager allegedly told him that while they weren’t accounting for his leave of absence, “unlucky leaves happen,” the rating was “impossible” to change, and “it is what it is.” Meta allegedly gave him a “Below Expectations” designation in his mid-year performance review while he was still on medical leave. 

The same plaintiff alleges in the lawsuit that Meta human resources never resolved a complaint he submitted about the performance review. Though the lawsuit states he returned to work after his extended leave, the plaintiff requested another stretch of medical leave for later this year or early next year. He was notified of his termination just weeks after telling his manager about his newly anticipated leave, according to the complaint.

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“Doe 6’s spouse is pregnant, with a child due in [redacted] 2026, which he refrained from disclosing to Meta because he was aware the employees who took paternity leave had been laid off in February 2025,” the lawsuit reads.

Meta has conducted three rounds of layoffs this year, with the latest round being the most voluminous. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, told employees in a staffwide memo that he did not expect any more layoffs this year, but the memo fell short of a firm commitment. The same memo contained an admission that management could do a better job at communicating with staff during company reorganizations. 

“I also want to acknowledge that we haven’t been as clear as we aspire to be in our communication,” Zuckerberg continued in the memo. “… That’s one area I want to make sure we improve.”