New Delhi, July 16 -- OAKLAND - A Meta employee who spent six weeks on pregnancy leave had no keystrokes to log, no AI tools to activate, no performance dashboards to accumulate scores in. When Meta's algorithmic ranking system assessed her team standing, she placed in the bottom tier. She is one of 26 employees who filed suit in federal court Monday claiming Meta used artificial intelligence to select workers for layoffs in ways that systematically penalized people exercising their federal rights.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland, names 26 anonymous Meta employees who say the company's layoff selection process relied on internal AI systems, keystroke and activity-m...