Twenty-six Meta employees have sued the company, alleging that AI-assisted or algorithmically informed layoff methods disproportionately affected workers who took medical, parental, family, pregnancy-related, or disability-related leave. According to news reports, they claim that activity data, token-usage dashboards, and performance rankings did not fairly account for protected leave or disability-related reductions. The dispute will ultimately turn on what the algorithmic inputs measured or ignored and whether human review was meaningful.
Business Takeaway: We have seen the dangers of “neutral” policies in the past—particularly relative to “no fault” attendance policies. Document bona fide job criteria and benchmarks, account for protected leave and accommodations, and require individualized review and decision-making. As technology (AI or otherwise) develops alongside your workplace policies, keep in mind that human judgment and analysis still go a long way, and that technology-based ignorance does not equate to “neutrality.”