Employee resistance to AI in the workplace may be more than a PR problem. For some workers, especially after Pope Leo’s recent encyclical, it could be part of their deeply held religious beliefs, as Bernadette Sargeant and Luke VanFleteren of Stinson write.
As AI becomes embedded in everyday job duties, employers are beginning to field a new form of accommodation request: Employees who decline to use AI tools at work for religious reasons.
Urgency sharpened in May when Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” When the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics warns that AI risks deepening inequality and cautions that technological advancement should not be pursued at the expense of human dignity or moral responsibility, employers should anticipate that some employees will translate that message into faith-based objections to using AI tools in the workplace.
Employers who navigated religious accommodation disputes during the Covid-19 vaccine era should recognize the pattern forming here, as the legal framework is similar. Title VII’s accommodation requirements, the Supreme Court’s clarified undue-hardship standard in Groff v. DeJoy and the EEOC’s guidance on sincerity of belief all apply. In a time when employee accommodation requests continue to increase in diversity and complexity, prudent employers will develop a framework to handle AI-related religious objections and to think through how and why their business needs to incorporate AI tools before such objections are made.
The legal framework: Groff and sincerity of belief
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs and practices unless doing so imposes an “undue hardship.” In 2023, the Supreme Court clarified the standard necessary to meet this undue hardship benchmark. In Groff v. DeJoy, a Christian mail carrier sought an accommodation allowing him to avoid working on Sundays, stating that his faith requires rest on the Sabbath. The Supreme Court held that undue hardship “is shown when a burden is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business” and the practical impact should be weighed “in light of the nature, size and operating cost of an employer.”
When it comes to evaluating whether an accommodation request is motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, the sincerity threshold is low. An employee does not have to prove that every member of the same faith, or every religious leader within that faith, agrees with the employee’s view. Instead, what matters is the employee’s own sincere belief, not whether that belief aligns with official doctrine.
Lawsuits brought by employees who were denied exemptions from employer Covid-19 vaccination requirements provide helpful lessons in this context. In Passarella v. Aspirus, the 7th Circuit recognized that a religious objection can sound in both religious and non-religious terms and religious beliefs do not have to be uniform across all members of a religion or acceptable, logical, consistent or comprehensible to others. The 8th Circuit took a similar tack in Ringhofer v. Mayo Clinic Ambulance, holding that an employee plausibly pleaded that his religious beliefs conflicted with his employer’s vaccination requirement, even though many other Christians elected to receive the vaccine.
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Read moreDetailsThese recent applications of existing law matter for AI objections, as employees have begun requesting religious accommodations. In May, Erin Maus, a software engineer at a large tech-entertainment company in North Carolina, secured a religious accommodation allowing her to opt-out of using AI tools at work. Maus argued that AI use conflicted with her Unitarian Universalist faith’s emphasis on the inherent worth of every person and cited ethical and environmental concerns. Although this situation does not constitute binding precedent since Maus’ employer granted the accommodation voluntarily before any legal claim was asserted, it is nonetheless instructive, as employers should be cautious about denying an employee’s AI accommodation request on the grounds that an employee’s objection is inconsistent with the beliefs and practices of others who practice the same religion.
This is not to say that any objection to the use of AI constitutes a sincere religious belief. The EEOC has clarified that social, political or economic philosophies, as well as mere personal preferences, are not religious beliefs protected by Title VII. However, overlap between a religious and political view does not place the belief outside the scope of Title VII’s religion protections, as long as the belief motivating the accommodation request is part of a comprehensive religious belief system. An employee who objects to AI because it “takes jobs,” “destroys the environment” or “feels unethical” may be voicing a secular policy view, not a religious belief. Still, given the ease with which religious and political beliefs can blur, employers should not ignore such objections and should instead carefully consider and document any such requests along with their response.
Undue hardship and the novelty of AI
In those instances where an employee makes a religious accommodation request based on sincerely held belief, covered employers must provide an accommodation absent from an undue hardship. AI’s novelty complicates this undue burden analysis. If a role was performed successfully before today’s AI tools existed, employees may argue that mandating AI use now is a matter of convenience rather than necessity. Efficiency gains, cost savings and competitive pressure may be legitimate considerations in the undue hardship analysis, but they should be quantified and weighed carefully when considering an accommodation request.
Employers who maintain that use of AI tools is essential to the success of certain jobs within their organization should memorialize the business case for this position before disputes arise. This includes updating job descriptions to identify proficiency with specific AI tools as an essential function of those jobs. Where possible, internal records should document measurable productivity differentials, client or regulatory expectations and security or quality-control reasons AI is required, as well as the concrete costs of carving out an exemption. Because undue hardship claims should be supported by actual evidence, contemporaneous documentation may be the difference between a defensible denial and a costly mistake.
Conclusion
Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical is the most recent indicator that employers should expect the growth of conscientious objection to workplace AI. Prudent employers should act now rather than wait for the first request. By revising job descriptions, documenting why specific AI tools are essential, training managers on the interactive process and treating religious accommodation requests consistently, employers can honor employees’ faith while protecting legitimate business needs.
Bernadette C. Sargeant
Luke Van Fleteren
