Thou shalt not use ChatGPT? Handling religious objections to AI at work

Yet many businesses have found AI tools to be genuinely useful for a range of tasks, streamlining processes, creating efficiencies and allowing teams to tackle projects that would otherwise have been too time-consuming or resource-intensive to be worthwhile. So how should an employer respond when employees raise objections about AI, even to the point of refusing to use or engage with AI-based tools and content?

The answer depends on the source of the employee’s objection. Federal law does not generally require private employers to accommodate personal preferences, political views or social or economic philosophies, no matter how deeply held. However, if an employee objects to AI on religious grounds, the employer must take the concern seriously – and may be required to provide an accommodation.

This situation is not merely hypothetical. In May 2026, Pope Leo XIV published an encyclical, “Magnifica humanitas: On safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” that criticized the direction and pace of AI development and urged caution and protection of human dignity amid technological change. With approximately 20 percent of U.S. adults describing themselves as Catholics according to the Pew Research Center, the encyclical and the ensuing dialogue surrounding it has the potential to bring religious accommodation issues to the forefront of workplace AI concerns.

What does the law say?

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an employer with 15 or more employees must provide reasonable accommodation for an individual’s sincerely held religious belief if a conflict exists between the belief and the demands of the individual’s job, unless the accommodation would result in undue hardship.

Prior to the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Groff v. DeJoy, the test for undue hardship in the religious accommodation context was not especially demanding. An employer needed to show only that a religious accommodation would pose “more than a de minimis burden” to prove undue hardship. But Groff made the standard considerably stricter. Now, an employer looking to show that a religious accommodation would pose an undue hardship must demonstrate that the accommodation would create a substantial burden in the overall context of an employer’s business, considering relevant factors such as the particular accommodation at issue and its practical impact in light of the nature, size and operating costs of the employer. This is a fact-specific analysis, and no two cases will be identical.

Further complicating the picture, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) defines religion broadly. The agency has long taken the position that a religious belief does not need to be mainstream or common to be protected, nor does it need to be the official position of a religious tradition. So while Pope Leo’s encyclical offers a high-profile example of a major religious denomination making a public statement critical of AI, that is not a prerequisite for an employee to have a right to reasonable accommodation. All that is necessary is that the employee’s belief is both sincerely held and religious in nature.

Navigating the accommodation process

Employers navigating these issues must tread carefully and engage in good faith with employees who raise religious objections to AI. Interactive dialogue is key; blanket denials can open an employer up to liability. However, that does not mean that employers must grant every request they receive.

Employers evaluating AI-related religious accommodation requests should keep the following tips in mind:

• Be intentional about AI strategy and document it. Every workplace and every job is unique, and employers must be able to clearly articulate which processes – and in which roles – AI use is truly vital and which fall more into the category of convenience. The ability to make these distinctions will help clarify when an employee’s request may be workable and when it is likely to constitute undue hardship. Consider updating job descriptions, policies and other documents to include information on when, why and how the organization uses AI.
• Ask questions, but don’t try to be a theologian. If an employee raises a religious objection to using AI at work, ask how the demands of the employee’s job conflict with their religious belief and what solution they have in mind. Do they object to all AI uses, or only some? It’s also acceptable to ask some basic questions to confirm that belief is religious in nature and sincerely held, but avoid challenging the validity of the belief itself.
• Collaborate on solutions. An employee is not necessarily entitled to their first-choice accommodation, but the dialogue should not end there. If an employee’s preferred option is not workable, continue to engage with the employee to look for a viable alternative.
• Don’t forget the fundamentals. Reasonable accommodation requests are nothing new for most employers, and the fundamentals of the process don’t change when AI is the reason for the request: engage in interactive dialogue and document every step of the process, including the details of the request, the business impact of the proposed accommodation, the final outcome, and the rationale for the decision.