2026年7月15日 / 美国东部时间早上6:17 / 哥伦比亚广播公司/美联社报道
26名Meta员工起诉该公司，指控其利用人工智能系统筛选裁员名单，不成比例地针对休医疗假、育儿假或家庭假的员工。
这些员工属于Meta今年5月宣布将裁员的8000人队伍，约占该公司员工总数的10%。今年4月，Meta在发给员工的内部备忘录中表示，裁员旨在提高公司运营效率，抵消其他方面的投资支出。
这起诉讼于周一晚间在加州奥克兰的联邦法院提交，指控Meta使用内部AI系统、按键和活动监控数据、AI令牌使用情况仪表板以及算法辅助的绩效排名等多种方式来确定裁员人选。
诉讼称，许多这类评分和评级“从设计上就无法被休受法律保护的医疗或家庭假，或因残疾导致工作产出减少的员工获得”。根据诉讼内容，Meta在考量员工评分时并未将受保护的假期纳入考量范围，且“未按照法律要求，针对休假和 accommodation（注：此处指职场便利调整）进行个性化、不偏不倚的审查”。
诉讼称，结果就是休受法律保护的医疗或家庭假的员工被不成比例地选为裁员对象。此次诉讼中的26名匿名员工都休过受保护的假期，并申请或获得过针对残疾的合理职场便利。尽管他们都收到了裁员通知，但这26人目前仍为Meta雇员，裁员生效时间定于7月22日。
诉讼中的许多员工都休过产假或育儿假，在此期间他们无法正常工作，因此衡量的工作产出有所减少。还有一些员工休过医疗假——其中一人披露了经Meta自家供应商批准的“严重健康状况和残疾”。但根据诉讼内容，他被一名经理“劝阻甚至阻止休该假”，该经理警告称休假会导致他被纳入预期的裁员名单。诉讼称，Meta未为他的残疾提供任何便利。
Meta在一份声明中表示，这些指控“毫无根据，并非基于事实。人员管理和组织决策过去是、现在也是由人类做出的，而非AI”。
Meta拟裁员员工的相关细节
约一半的原告曾因照顾家人或与怀孕相关的原因休假。其中8名女性休过产假或与怀孕相关的假期，4名男性休过育儿假，还有1名女性休过照顾家人的假期，之后又休了丧亲假。
诉讼称，此次裁员违反了多项州和联邦法律，包括《家庭和医疗休假法》《美国残疾人法案》《怀孕歧视法》以及《孕产期工人公平法案》。
诉状还提及了“差别影响责任”这一长期存在的民权概念，特朗普政府曾试图废除这一概念。差别影响原则在1964年《民权法案》第七章中有明确规定，该原则认为，表面上中立的政策或做法如果不成比例地给受保护的工人群体带来负担，且并非工作所必需，就可能构成歧视。
特朗普政府曾下令联邦机构降低对差别影响责任诉讼的执法优先级，辩称该原则会破坏“任人唯贤”，并助长一种假设，即劳动力中任何种族或性别失衡都是歧视导致的。该命令导致美国平等就业机会委员会撤销了部分代表劳动者提起的歧视诉讼。
然而，针对Meta的诉讼凸显出，尽管特朗普政府试图取缔差别影响原则的执法，但在人工智能时代，企业仍容易面临差别影响相关诉讼。如果平等就业机会委员会驳回劳动者的投诉，劳动者仍可自行提起此类诉讼，而且多个州的法律明确禁止差别影响式的歧视。
在针对Meta的案件中，原告律师辩称，该公司“以系统方式将缺勤记录为绩效下降的算法辅助选拔流程，对女性的影响远大于男性”。律师们表示，这是因为女性休产假和照顾家人假期的比例不成比例地高于男性。诉讼援引了《民权法案》第七章对就业实践的禁令，以及1971年最高法院认可该原则的标志性判决。
原告律师在一份声明中表示，此次诉讼只要求一件事——维持现状，保留这些员工的职位，等待仲裁程序。这是因为“一旦裁员正式生效，损害将不可逆转：孕妇、产后恢复期和正在接受治疗的员工将失去雇主补贴的医疗保险；受时间限制的休假权利将被剥夺；未归属的股权将被没收；还会引发移民相关的后果”。
26 Meta workers sue over alleged AI-aided layoffs targeting employees on medical or family leave
July 15, 2026 / 6:17 AM EDT / CBS/AP
A group of 26 Meta employees has sued the company, claiming it used artificial intelligence systems to select people for layoffs, disproportionately targeting those on medical, parental or family leave.
They are among the 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its workforce that Meta said it would lay off starting in May. In an internal memo to employees in April, the company said the cuts would be aimed at making the company more efficient and offsetting its other investments.
The lawsuit filed late Monday in federal court in Oakland, California, claims the company used internal AI systems, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI token-usage dashboards and algorithmically assisted performance rankings, among other methods, to determine who would be laid off.
Many of these scores and ratings “by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability,” the lawsuit says. Meta, according to the lawsuit, did not account for protected leave when taking employees’ scores into account and “did not pause the system for the individualized, leave- and accommodation-neutral review that the law requires.”
As a result, people on protected medical or family leave were disproportionately selected for layoffs, the lawsuit says. Each of the 26 anonymous employees in the lawsuit took protected leave and requested or received a reasonable accommodation for disability. Though they have been notified of their layoffs, all 26 remain employed by Meta, with separations set to begin July 22.
Many of the employees in the lawsuit took pregnancy or parental leave, during which time they wouldn’t have worked and thus had their measured output reduced. Others took medical leave — one disclosed a “serious health condition and disability” that was approved by Meta’s own provider. But according to the lawsuit, he was “discouraged and deterred from taking that leave by a manager” who warned that doing so would result in his selection for the anticipated layoffs. Meta offered no accommodation for his disability, the lawsuit says.
Meta said in a statement that the claims “lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”
Details on the workers Meta intends to lay off
About half the plaintiffs had taken leave for caregiving or pregnancy-related reasons. Eight are women who had taken maternity or pregnancy-related leave, four are men who had taken parental leave and one is a woman who had taken leave to care for a family member and later bereavement leave.
The lawsuit says the layoffs violated several state and federal laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
The complaint also references “disparate impact liability,” a longstanding civil rights concept that President Trump’s administration moved to abandon. Disparate impact, codified in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, holds that facially neutral policies or practices can be discriminatory if they disproportionately burden a protected class of workers and aren’t necessary for the job.
The Trump administration has ordered federal agencies to deprioritize disparate impact liability enforcement, arguing that its use undermines “meritocracy” and encourages the assumption that any racial or gender imbalance in a workforce is the result of discrimination. The order has led the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to drop discrimination cases on behalf of some workers.
However, the lawsuit against Meta underscores that companies remain vulnerable to disparate impact litigation in the age of AI despite the Trump administration’s efforts to stamp out its enforcement. Workers are still free to pursue such lawsuits on their own if the EEOC rejects their complaints, and several state laws specifically prohibit disparate impact discrimination.
In the case against Meta, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the company’s “algorithmically assisted selection process, by systematically recording such absences as reduced performance, falls more heavily on women than on men.” That’s because women disproportionately take pregnancy and caregiving leave, according to the lawyers. The lawsuit cites Title VII’s prohibition on employment practices that have a disparate impact, as well as a landmark 1971 Supreme Court ruling that recognized the doctrine.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said in a statement that the lawsuit asks for one thing — preserving the status quo to keep the workers employed pending arbitration. That’s because “once these separations are final, the harms are irreversible: employer-subsidized health coverage lost during pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and active medical treatment; time-bound leave rights extinguished; unvested equity forfeited; and immigration consequences triggered.”
发表回复