University of Kentucky research administrator David Durman obtained an exemption from personal AI use at work. The American Humanist Association says it was granted on September 25 after the university found no undue burden on his department.

The big change

  • The arrangement distinguishes Durman’s own use of AI from cooperation with colleagues who use it. A worker’s objection to personally using a tool need not mean avoiding every shared system in which AI is present.
  • A request can identify the work requirement that conflicts with a belief. That lets employers assess an adjustment against the employee’s duties and workplace.
  • An adjustment’s impact depends on the job and employer. One department’s solution does not automatically establish an entitlement elsewhere.

The work and the request

Durman told Religion News Service he can help with grant applications without AI and objects to delegating his thinking to such tools.

The American Humanist Association says Durman wrote to the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity in late August and met officials in September. In the association’s account, he regards independent thought and personal moral responsibility as part of his humanist commitments. The association supported his request; its statement is an account from a participant, not a public copy of the personnel file.

RNS reports the letter says he may still be expected to attend meetings or be required to submit materials through sites where others use AI.

What Title VII requires

Title VII requires a covered employer aware of a conflict between a work requirement and sincerely held religious belief to reasonably accommodate it, absent undue hardship to the business. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s guidance says both sides should cooperate in identifying an effective adjustment.

An employer may offer a different reasonable accommodation; it need not share the employee’s belief. The EEOC’s regulation on religious beliefs includes sincerely held moral or ethical beliefs with a strength comparable to traditional religious views. A belief need not be theistic to qualify, but a strongly held objection alone does not automatically qualify as religious.

In Groff v. DeJoy, the Supreme Court held in 2023 that an employer claiming undue hardship must show substantial increased costs in relation to its particular business. Courts must consider the accommodation’s practical impact alongside the employer’s nature, size and operating costs. The EEOC notes that Groff supersedes older “more than de minimis cost” wording that remains elsewhere on its guidance page.

His employer granted the adjustment; it is not a court ruling establishing a general exemption.