Article By Frank Bergman
Meta is facing a major lawsuit from former employees who accuse the tech giant of using artificial intelligence to decide which human employees should be fired and replaced with AI-powered automation during sweeping layoffs.
The complaint alleges that Meta relied on an internal AI-powered platform to rank workers using opaque productivity data and large language model usage, potentially punishing employees who had taken maternity, medical, or family leave.
Employees Say AI Flagged Them for Termination
Twenty-six Meta employees filed the lawsuit, including engineers, managers, researchers, designers, and a director who allegedly had direct access to the company’s internal AI platform.
The plaintiffs claim Meta used its human resources system, known as “Checkpoint,” to identify workers for termination during the company’s latest round of job cuts.
According to the lawsuit, the platform assessed employees using productivity metrics and LLM token usage without properly accounting for legally protected absences.
Nearly half of the plaintiffs allege they were selected for termination after taking maternity or parental leave.
Others say they were targeted after taking medical leave for disabilities, bereavement leave, or time off to care for family members.
The lawsuit argues that Checkpoint treated these absences as evidence of poor engagement rather than as protected leave.
Workers Allegedly Warned Against Taking Leave
Several plaintiffs claim Meta managers warned them that taking time away from work could jeopardize their jobs.
One anonymous director said he was “discouraged and deterred from taking FMLA [Family and Medical Leave Act] leave that his treating provider had recommended, out of a well-founded and objective concern from a manager that such a leave would be held against him in the [reduction in force].”
The director further alleged that Meta’s system “failed to distinguish employees’ leave from lack of engagement.”
The accusations raise serious questions about whether the company’s automation tools were used to strip critical context from decisions that could destroy workers’ careers.
Rather than evaluating why an employee’s activity had fallen, the system allegedly treated medical leave, maternity leave, and family emergencies as signs of underperformance.
Meta Denies AI Made Layoff Decisions
The complaint seeks to stop Meta from terminating the 26 plaintiffs.
Each employee may ultimately be required to file a separate lawsuit because of legal agreements signed with the company.
Meta rejected the central allegations in the case.
In a statement, a company spokesperson said:
“Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”
However, the lawsuit alleges that those human decisions were heavily influenced by an AI-integrated platform.
The system ranked workers using data that failed to account for protected leave.
The case could become a major test of how far corporations can go in using artificial intelligence to make life-changing employment decisions while avoiding responsibility for the results.
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