A $638 million figure in a draft reference letter now sits at the heart of a lawsuit
A former Meta manager says the company fired him after he refused to sign a reference letter as drafted, claiming it overstated a team member's work.
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey on August 17, 2026. It names Meta Platforms, Inc. and the man's former direct manager, who is sued individually. The claims include retaliation under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and retaliation under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.
According to the filing, he worked at Meta for approximately four and a half years and held the title Manager, Product Design, Monetization GEN-AI Group, leading design work on monetization and generative-AI projects. The complaint says he had no documented performance deficiency that explained or justified his termination.
The dispute began with a letter. In or about April or May 2024, the filing says, Meta and its outside immigration counsel coordinated an I-140 EB-2 National Interest Waiver petition concerning an employee who worked within his product-design organization. That petition route asks the government to waive the ordinary job-offer and labor-certification requirements where the work is found to have national importance and where the waiver would benefit the United States. The complaint says the outside firm prepared or substantially prepared a proposed managerial reference letter addressed to USCIS and presented it to him for his credentials, supervisory knowledge and signature.
The filing alleges the draft attributed approximately $638 million in incremental advertising revenue to that employee, stated or implied he had created algorithms or artificial-intelligence tools, and represented or implied that he managed, led or oversaw a team or cross-functional group in a way that overstated his actual position.
He alleges he understood the employee's actual role to be principally in product design and user experience, and understood that engineering personnel were responsible for creating and maintaining the algorithms and artificial-intelligence models. The letter also addressed the national-importance component of the petition. He says he had no factual, professional or governmental basis to endorse those broader assertions.
According to the complaint, he consulted a member of Meta's internal immigration legal team, worked with the employee to revise the letter so it contained only statements he says he could truthfully endorse, and refused to sign the broader version.
He also raised a second objection. The complaint alleges, on information and belief, that Meta selectively used its company-coordinated immigration-support process - counsel access, preparation and review of petition materials, coordination with managers, and requests for managerial reference letters - to support certain Chinese-national employees, while similarly situated employees of other national origins did not receive comparable support. The claim, as pleaded, is that the selection and allocation of that support were not governed by neutral, consistently applied criteria. The filing states his objection was not directed at Chinese nationality, ancestry, immigration status or lawful employment, and that he does not allege Meta was prohibited from providing lawful immigration assistance to Chinese nationals.
He says he raised both concerns at a recurring team leads meeting attended by his direct manager and others. According to the complaint, his direct manager responded with words to the effect of: "Don't worry about this, we'll take care of it." The national-interest portion of the letter was then routed to that manager, who the filing says supplied or signed the substitute letter. The complaint alleges the substitute letter included or relied upon representations he had refused to endorse, including representations concerning the employee's revenue impact, algorithmic work and leadership responsibilities. The manager is named individually on an aiding-and-abetting count under state law.
On the termination, the filing says Meta revoked his access to its internal systems on or about August 29, 2024, without prior notice, and formally ended his employment effective September 30, 2024. The complaint alleges the termination letter did not state that he was terminated for underperformance, and that the contemporaneous termination materials identified no performance-improvement plan, written warning, documented performance deficiency or individualized performance rationale. Meta later advanced an oral underperformance explanation, the filing says. He contends that explanation was pretextual because it was absent from the contemporaneous documents and followed his objections and refusal.
The complaint then turns to the internal investigation. He says he submitted or participated in a Meta SpeakUp report on September 26, 2024. On October 3, 2024, according to the filing, a Meta representative communicated that discussions concerning his severance package should be paused while the matter was investigated. Approximately forty-eight hours before he signed his separation agreement on or about December 19, 2024, the complaint says Meta's investigation representative represented words to the effect that the company had completed its investigation, found no evidence and closed the case.
He alleges that representation was materially incomplete or misleading because the investigation had not adequately examined the proposed and substitute letters, the immigration-related communications, his report, the October 3 communication, or the connection between his refusal and his termination. He is asking the court to rescind or set aside the separation agreement and release, and to declare that any arbitration or delegation provision in it was not formed or is unenforceable.
The complaint puts his confirmed economic damages at $565,574.76 in compensation-related losses and approximately $490,940.32 in forfeited equity, subject to proof and adjustment based on Meta's records. His wife is a co-plaintiff and seeks only derivative loss-of-consortium damages recognised under New Jersey law.
The filing is also specific about what it does not allege. It states the plaintiffs do not allege that any defendant committed immigration-document fraud, and do not allege that the outside immigration counsel, or another individual named in the filing, made the ultimate decision to terminate him.
The allegations have not been tested in court, and no judge has ruled on any of the claims.
