On May 15, 2026, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, entitled “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” His encyclical calls for safeguarding humanity and promoting truth, dignity of work, social justice, and peace. The central theme of the encyclical is how one of the most pervasive new technologies—artificial intelligence (AI)—directly conflicts with one of the world’s most pervasive and oldest structures: religion. So as AI becomes even more pervasive in the workplace, we predict many employers will face employees requesting religious accommodations from having to use AI for their work. Employers need to be prepared how to address such requests.
Title VII framework for addressing employee’s religious accommodation requests
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs or practices unless doing so would create an undue hardship upon the employer’s business. If an employee approaches an employer seeking accommodation, then the employer should engage in an interactive dialogue to consider reasonable efforts to accommodate the employee’s religious beliefs before denying accommodations outright. Religious exemption requests are rarely simple, and it is important for a business to have legal counsel involved at all stages of the accommodation process.
- Is the request based on asincerely heldreligious belief?
Courts use a two-pronged test to determine whether an employer may deny an employee religious workplace accommodation. The first prong examines whether the employee’s belief or practice is religious in nature. Over sixty years ago, the Supreme Court held in United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965), that an employee’s religious belief may qualify for a workplace accommodation if that belief is “sincerely held.” As the Supreme Court explained in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682, 686 (2014), this first prong focuses whether the employee has an “honest conviction” in the religious beliefs cited for the accommodation request and not whether the employee’s religious beliefs “are mistaken or unreasonable.” In addressing an employee’s request not to have to use AI in the workplace, an employer is not to consider whether the employee’s aversion to AI use is based upon the teachings of an established, organized religion or is mistaken or unreasonable or whether other adherents to the same religion share the employee’s aversion to AI use. Instead, the only relevant consideration related to the first prong is whether the employee seeking the accommodation genuinely adheres to whatever religious belief is preventing the employee from using AI.
Under Burwell, an employer may be able to show that an employee’s aversion to AI usage is not based upon a sincere religious belief if the employer can show that the employee uses AI outside of the workplace. However, an employer might do better to focus on the second prong, which balances the religious workplace accommodations with the burden the accommodations would place upon the employer.
- Would the requested accommodation createan unduehardship for the employer?
Title VII does not require an employer to provide an accommodation if doing so would create an “undue hardship” for the employer. In Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447, (2023), the Supreme Court ruled that an “undue hardship” within the scope of Title VII requires a showing not just of a “de minimis cost” to the employer, but instead requires a showing that the burden to the employer in having to provide the requested accommodation “is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business.”
Recent federal appellate decisions have addressed this two-part test in different ways. In Petersen v. Snohomish Reg’l Fire & Rescue, 150 F.4th 1211 (9th Cir. 2025), the Ninth Circuit held that an employer satisfied the substantial burden test when it denied firefighters’ requests for religious exemptions from the employer’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement. The employer in that case provided specific, concrete examples of the resulting hardship that providing the requested accommodation would pose for it, including the health risk to the requesting firefighters’ coworkers and the resulting “operational cost” if those firefighters were infected with COVID-19.
In contrast, in Hebrew v. Tex. Dep’t of Crim. Just., 80 F.4th 717 (5th Cir. 2023), the Fifth Circuit held that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) failed to meet the burden of proving undue hardship when it relied upon hypothetical burdens rather than specific and substantial increased burdens resulting from the requested accommodation. In Hebrew, the plaintiff’s religious beliefs prevented him from cutting his beard, and he was subsequently fired by TDCJ for failing to comply with its grooming policy. Unlike the scientific facts and quantifiable financial loss outlined by the employer in Peterson, the TDCJ relied solely on relatively minor burdens that had not actually occurred yet, such as the possible inconvenience of searching the plaintiff’s beard for hidden contraband.
In EEOC v. Consol Energy, Inc., 860 F.3d 131 (4th Cir. 2017), the Fourth Circuit considered religious workplace accommodations in relation to new technology when it held that an energy company violated Title VII by refusing to accommodate a coal miner’s religious beliefs. The employer in that case began using biometric hand scanners to track the employees at its Robinson Run Mine. One of the miners, an evangelical Christian, told his supervisors that using the scanner violated his religious beliefs. After the company refused to accommodate his request for not using these hand scanners, the miner “retired under protest” and then sued under Title VII. The court ruled in the miner’s favor and noted that he had worked at the mine “without incident” for thirty-seven years before the hand scanners were installed and that the purpose of the technology—to track the hours worked by employees—was not a vital component of the mining business. In that case, the company was already allowing employees with hand injuries to “enter their personnel numbers on a keypad attached to the system” at “no additional cost or burden on the company.” Thus, the company failed to show that the requested accommodation would be a substantial burden.
What should an employer do when an employee requests an accommodation for not using AI for work?
These cases underscore that, when an employer that uses AI in its business is presented with an employee’s request for an accommodation not to have to use AI and the employee cites a religious belief for that request, the employer should consider several factors.
Although an employer could question the sincerity of the employee’s request (for example, by investigating whether the employee uses AI outside the workplace), it could be tricky for an employer to rely solely on a conclusion that the employee’s religious objection is not sincerely held, as such a conclusion—at least without a strong factual record to support the conclusion—could be seen as improperly subjective and pretextual. An employer may be safer grounds to deny the accommodation request if the employer can show that use of AI is critical for the employer’s current business and that allowing one or more employees not to use AI for their work would likely result in more time for the employer to obtain needed results/work-output and thus in more costs to the employer to its competitive disadvantage. Conversely, however, if an employer does not require all employees of similar classification to use AI or if the time or costs savings to the employer from using AI is not significant, then the employer may not have sufficient grounds to deny the accommodation request.
An employer considering an employee’s religious objection to the use of AI should consider whether the job has been successfully performed without the use of AI in the past. If a job function has been successfully performed for decades without a piece of technology and the job function has not changed in the meanwhile, then it is likely not a “substantial burden” to allow an employee to perform that job function without the use of AI. However, an employer could rely on Consul Energy to deny an employee’s request not to use AI if the employee can show that AI use is now integral to the function of the employer and that granting the accommodation would create an undue burden on the employer. Although there is virtually no difference in an employee “clocking in” to work by using a keypad versus a hand scanner, there are likely industries and businesses in which abstaining from the use of AI could seriously affect the company’s operations and financial profit.
Conclusion
In summary, an employer is required to provide reasonable accommodation for an employee’s religious beliefs or practices if those beliefs are sincerely held by the employee and the requested accommodation would not cause an undue hardship for the employer. This analysis can often be nuanced. So, if an employee requests workplace accommodation, the employer should promptly initiate an open dialogue with the employee to determine whether a reasonable accommodation can be made. If a reasonable accommodation based a sincerely held religious belief is not possible, then the employer must show that providing any form of accommodation creates a substantial burden that amounts to an “undue hardship.” Courts will consider the specific facts and circumstances of a case when evaluating both the sincerity of the employee’s beliefs and the burden placed upon the employer in order to accommodate those beliefs. Particularly because AI and its implications for religious exemptions are so dynamic, it is important to have legal counsel involved at all stages of a religious exemption conversation.
If you have questions about AI or religious exemptions in the workplace, please contact Mag Bickford or Jess Waltman.
Mag Bickford represents businesses, education providers, and management in labor and employment litigation and provides general legal counsel on a variety of workforce matters to clients nationwide.
Jess Waltman represents clients in commercial litigation matters across the Gulf South.