A new lawsuit accuses tech giant Meta of using AI software to target disabled people for layoffs. In May, Meta announced they would be sacking around 8,000 people. Twenty-six employees filed the complaint anonymously on Monday, 13 July, in Oakland, California. The complaint states that Meta used AI tools which gathered data on employees’ performance, including productivity and activity monitoring, and that the scores of those who took more medical leave were reduced because they were at work less. The complaint explains that the tools "draw on inputs… that, by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave," and that Meta "did not neutralize those inputs for protected leave; did not exclude protected-leave-takers or accommodation-seekers from the selection cohort." The result was that "employees who took protected leaves were disproportionately selected for layoff." The plaintiffs accuse Meta of violating federal and state laws that ban discrimination against workers who have disabilities, take medical leave, or are pregnant, and also claim Meta’s AI systems were not tested for bias. The lawsuit also explains that the monitoring program was announced through a low-visibility internal post with no consent or opt-out option. The twenty-six plaintiffs include a scientist who was on pregnancy leave and then parental leave, who found out she’d lost her job two days before she gave birth.