{"id":289570,"date":"2026-07-14T19:36:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T23:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/14\/meta-used-ai-to-tag-workers-who-took-leave-to-be-laid-off-lawsuit-claims-technology\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T19:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T23:45:09","slug":"meta-used-ai-to-tag-workers-who-took-leave-to-be-laid-off-lawsuit-claims-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/14\/meta-used-ai-to-tag-workers-who-took-leave-to-be-laid-off-lawsuit-claims-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta used AI to tag workers who took leave to be laid off, lawsuit claims | Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta used AI to tag workers who took leave to be laid off, lawsuit claims | Technology<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/jul\/14\/meta-ai-mass-layoffs-lawsuit<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-07-14 19:36:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Dozens of Meta employees have sued the social media company over claims that it used artificial intelligence tools to tag workers for mass layoffs. All of these workers allege that those AI tools targeted them after they asked for protected or maternity leave or disability accommodation.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in the northern district of California, points to Meta\u2019s workforce reduction of about 8,000 employees earlier this year. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The suit alleges that Meta used a \u201cconstellation of internal artificial intelligence systems\u201d, including AI performance ratings and keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, to pinpoint who to lay off.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,\u201d reads the 71-page complaint. Instead, the 26 workers listed in the lawsuit allege the company used AI systems \u201cto score, rank and select employees for inclusion on the list\u201d.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary court ruling to stop Meta from finalizing the layoffs while they pursue their \u200bclaims, along with relief that could include reinstatement, back pay, lost equity, benefits and other damages.<\/p>\n

AI decision-making in the workplace is becoming an increasingly fraught issue as employees raise concerns around bias, privacy and trust, and regulators are scrutinizing the legality of such tools. States, including California, Colorado and Illinois, have passed laws or regulations within the last couple of years seeking to protect workers from AI-related bias and \u201cautomated decision systems\u201d.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit against Meta alleges that the company\u2019s AI tools gather data on employees\u2019 performance rankings, productivity and other metrics, and that those inputs don\u2019t exist when workers are on medical or family leave. For people with disabilities, those metrics might be reduced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result was that employees who took protected leaves were…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meta used AI to tag workers who took leave to be laid off, lawsuit claims…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":289571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/c1f65fac6b8a7f109e61bc731e7d728fa93be1be\/864_0_4318_3455\/master\/4318.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=7f043ce821719fbe8b9f4155a74b14ee","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289572,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289570\/revisions\/289572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}