Ex-Meta workers sue over AI-picked layoffs during leave

Twenty-six former Meta employees are suing the company over how it picked who to lay off, according to Reuters. They say an AI tool used for the selection disproportionately hit workers on medical and family leave, per The Verge's coverage of the filing.

Whether disparate-impact law reaches an algorithm instead of a manager hasn't been tested in court. If a judge finds Meta's tool created a pattern that punished leave-takers, other plaintiffs' attorneys will reuse that template.

HR vendors selling ranking or scoring tools into layoff decisions carry the same exposure. Their output becomes someone's exit interview, whether or not their logo ends up on a complaint.

What's not in the reporting yet

The Verge's coverage doesn't say which AI tool Meta used or how leave status factored into its inputs. That gap decides the case. Intentional targeting reads differently in court than a model that happened to correlate leave-taking with something else it was scoring for.

Worth watching the docket over the next few filings. Discovery should surface the actual model logic, which is where this stops being a headline and starts shaping how companies score people for cuts.