A group of Meta workers is taking the company to court over how it decided who would lose their jobs. More than two dozen current and former employees have filed a lawsuit accusing the technology giant of using artificial intelligence to carry out layoffs, a claim that thrusts the increasingly common practice of automating workplace decisions into a legal spotlight. The case could force a reckoning over how much of the difficult, human work of deciding who stays and who goes is now being handed to software.
At the center of the complaint is the allegation that the cuts were driven by an algorithm rather than by managers weighing each case on its merits. According to the group, the company leaned on AI to determine which workers would be let go, a process the employees argue stripped away the human judgment and individual consideration that such consequential decisions have traditionally involved.
The most serious accusation is that the automated system did not treat all workers equally. The group claims the software disproportionately targeted people with disabilities or those who had taken medical leave, effectively singling out some of the most vulnerable employees for termination. If borne out, that pattern would raise the prospect that the tool encoded bias against workers who are protected under anti-discrimination law.
The lawsuit does not arrive in a vacuum. It comes nearly a month after a federal judge in California ruled against the technology firm Workday in a separate employee-related lawsuit involving artificial intelligence. That earlier decision, which allowed a challenge to an AI-driven hiring system to move forward, has been closely watched, and it appears to have encouraged workers who believe automated systems have treated them unfairly to press their own claims in court.
The two cases together point to a broader shift that is only beginning to be tested in the legal system. Companies have increasingly turned to artificial intelligence to help make hiring, evaluation and firing decisions at scale, drawn by the promise of speed and efficiency. But critics warn that such tools can quietly reproduce or amplify bias, and that affected workers may struggle to understand or contest a decision made by a machine.
For Meta, the suit adds a fresh legal challenge at a time of upheaval across the technology sector, where waves of layoffs have reshaped the workforce. More broadly, the case is shaping up as an early test of whether long-standing protections against workplace discrimination will hold up when the decisions that upend people's careers are shaped by algorithms rather than by managers alone. How the courts answer that question could set expectations for employers well beyond a single company.