The layoffs, which were scheduled to be finalised on 22 July for many workers and later in July or August for others, will now go ahead after a court refused to intervene. The 26 employees had pursued claims that they were targeted for job cuts by Meta's AI-powered tools because they have disabilities or took medical leave.
US District Judge William Orrick in Oakland, California issued a written order on 17 July saying he would not stop Meta from carrying out the layoffs while the merits of the workers' legal claims are decided in private arbitration. The judge said the workers could not show that losing their jobs amounted to the "irreparable harm" required for him to issue an emergency order blocking the layoffs.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said that while Orrick denied their request, he also recognised that the lawsuit raises "serious questions" about Meta's conduct. Their motion for a preliminary injunction, a longer-lasting temporary order, is pending, and Orrick said during the hearing he would likely rule on it next month.
The plaintiffs claim that Meta used a number of internal AI-assisted systems to score and rank employees on a termination list, including a large language model assistant known as "Metamate" and an employee-trained "second brain" that tracked workers' communications and documents. Meta did not pause these systems while employees were on vacations and legally protected leave periods, and their AI adoption scores used as inputs for layoff selection dropped as a result, the plaintiffs said.
Meta has denied wrongdoing and said that decisions involving the layoffs were made by humans. The plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit anonymously, include engineers, managers, researchers and designers. The case appears to be the first against a major US company to challenge the alleged use of AI in conducting layoffs.
For working professionals, the case highlights a growing concern: as companies adopt AI tools to manage performance and headcount decisions, workers may have limited visibility into how those systems affect their employment particularly during periods of protected leave.
