California judge won't block Meta layoffs amid claims AI targeted workers on medical leave

Ah, Meta has graced us with another glorious round of layoffs, this time with a particularly delicious algorithmic twist: AI tools allegedly singling out workers on medical leave for termination. A California judge, in a move that should shock precisely no one who has followed American labour law, declined to block the cuts. Because really, why let a few pesky claims about disability discrimination interfere with 'efficiency' and 'streamlining'? The lawsuit, filed by former employees, claims Meta's algorithms flagged people on sick leave as 'low performers' — a euphemism so transparent it glows in the dark.

What makes this especially rich is Meta's long-standing PR machine, which has spent years touting AI as a solution to workplace bias. Now they're deploying it to automate the very discrimination they claimed to eliminate. The judge's refusal to issue a temporary restraining order means the case will grind through discovery, likely unearthing cheerful internal chats about 'optimising headcount' while the algorithm does the messy work. Expect a confidential settlement, a boilerplate apology about 'learning from this experience,' and precisely zero structural change within the company's HR department.

In the grand tradition of Silicon Valley, Meta has demonstrated that when you have a hammer made of machine learning, every problem looks like a nail — especially if that nail is a cancer patient on FMLA leave. The courts will take years to catch up, and by then, the affected workers will be long gone, replaced by an AI that spends its days hallucinating diversity metrics. The only silver lining? At least the algorithm isn't charging for its services yet.