A university worker just won a religious exemption from using AI at work
A University of Kentucky administrator used a civil-rights law to opt out of AI tools, in what appears to be the first case built on secular Humanism rather than a traditional faith.
What happened: David Durman, a grants administrator at the University of Kentucky, has been granted a workplace exemption from using AI, citing his 30-year adherence to Humanism, a nontheistic ethical worldview. He filed the request in August under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which protects religious beliefs, with help from an attorney at the American Humanist Association. After a meeting to assess the sincerity of his views, the university approved the accommodation on September 25. He says he filed pre-emptively, before any AI mandate existed, after colleagues and leadership began pushing AI tools.
Why it matters: Title VII's religious protections already cover nontheistic belief systems, but this appears to be among the first times that protection has been used specifically to refuse AI tools, and the first tied explicitly to Humanism. It lands as employers lean harder into AI adoption: Shopify's CEO has called AI use baseline, Amazon has pushed engineers to adopt it, and a Gallup poll found 52% of U.S. workers used AI on the job by May 2026, up from 21% in 2023, even as many fear falling behind or losing parts of their jobs to it.
How it works, plainly: Under Title VII, employers must accommodate sincerely held religious beliefs, including nontheistic ones, unless doing so causes real, substantial cost rather than minor inconvenience. That bar got higher after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling Groff v. DeJoy. The EEOC still separates genuine religious conviction from personal, political, or economic objections, so employers assess sincerity case by case, looking at things like how consistently someone has lived out the belief, such as Durman disabling AI features in his own life for years.
The rollout: This exemption applies only to Durman and his specific role, which didn't already require AI, so it changed nothing about his daily duties. It sets no binding rule for other University of Kentucky staff or other employers, and the university says accommodations could be revisited as AI use expands. Durman was inspired by Erin Maus, a Unitarian Universalist software engineer who won a similar exemption in May, and he says he hopes going public encourages others with similar objections to pursue their own case.