The University of Kentucky granted a workplace religious accommodation allowing a humanist employee to avoid using artificial intelligence, according to the American Humanist Association, which announced the decision on Oct. 26.
The university’s equal opportunity office approved the request in late September after determining that the employee’s nonuse of AI would not create an undue burden for his department. Jay Blanton, a university spokesperson, said the employee, a research administrator, could perform the essential functions of his job under the accommodation.
The employee said using AI conflicted with his deeply held Humanist beliefs and with his sense of personal responsibility for the morality of his actions. He also cited concerns about AI’s environmental costs, its impact on people’s ability to earn a living and what he described as the replacement and appropriation of human creativity.
Blanton said the university evaluates religious accommodation requests individually. He added that accommodations may be reassessed as technology and job responsibilities change, to ensure they remain reasonable and workable.
The American Humanist Association praised the decision, arguing that comprehensive non-theistic belief systems such as Humanism are entitled to the same constitutional protections as other beliefs. The case illustrates a compliance issue that may become more prominent as artificial intelligence becomes more common in workplaces.
Employment law experts have warned that objections to AI based on religious beliefs could increasingly come before employers. Under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, an employer may reject a proposed religious accommodation if it can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship.
The standard changed after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Groff v. DeJoy. The court held that an accommodation creates an undue hardship only when the burden is substantial in the overall context of the employer’s business, a higher threshold than the previous standard based on more than a minimal cost.
The Kentucky case is not the first reported U.S. example involving an AI-related religious accommodation. Business Insider reported in June that a software engineer at a North Carolina-based Unitarian Universalist organization received an accommodation after raising environmental and ethical objections to the technology.
As employers develop AI policies, they may need to address issues including data privacy, discriminatory outcomes, human oversight of final business decisions and requests from employees who object to AI use on religious or ethical grounds.
Sources: HR Dive.