For a layoff where half the company is being laid off, if it is done fairly some subgroup of the population will be slightly more impacted. This isn't nearly a large enough gap to suggest malice or other hostile intent.

The only two ways to ensure that "no protected group sees a disproportionate impact" are to make layoffs illegal (probably what some people would like, but impossible), or to require companies to do a lot of demographically-based bias in the name of avoiding it.