26 Meta employees sue, alleging layoff picks hit workers on medical…

26 Meta employees have sued the company for allegedly using AI systems to identify and disproportionately lay off workers on medical, parental, or family leave during its May 8,000-person reduction. The lawsuit claims Meta's performance-measurement systems could not account for protected leave periods, violating federal laws including the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. If you're building people analytics or performance-measurement systems for HR, you now have hard proof that algorithms can't be neutral about leave without explicit design. Meta's layoff system became a liability because it treated absence as underperformance — you need to architect leave-blindness into your scoring logic or your customers face class-action exposure.