Meta is being sued over allegations that the company used artificial intelligence tools to identify and target employees with medical conditions during its recent rounds of layoffs. The lawsuit raises pointed questions about what happens when companies let algorithms make decisions that affect people’s livelihoods, and whether AI-driven workforce management can comply with disability discrimination laws.
What happened
The lawsuit alleges that Meta’s layoff process incorporated AI-assisted evaluations that disproportionately flagged workers with medical conditions for termination. In English: the algorithm may have treated health-related factors, like leave patterns or accommodation requests, as signals that an employee was less productive or less essential.
This isn’t Meta’s first rodeo with layoff-related litigation. A separate lawsuit filed by former employee Nicolas Franchet claimed that Meta’s workforce reductions disproportionately hit older workers. That suit alleged employees over 50 were 2.5 times more likely to be laid off than their younger colleagues.
Meta’s 2025-2026 restructuring plan was sweeping by any measure. The company planned to cut 10% of its workforce, transfer roughly 7,000 employees into different roles, and eliminate approximately 6,000 open positions entirely.
