A Kentucky Man Becomes the First Humanist Granted Religious Exemption From AI

Saved from a LinkedIn News story, “Humanist wins exemption from using AI at work”, which summarises this RNS report. The RNS article is the original reporting, and Gizmodo, Daily Nous, TechRadar and others cite it.

Summary

What happened. David Durman, 45, is a research administrator at the University of Kentucky who helps researchers with grant applications. The university began asking employees to use AI in their workflow, naming tools like Microsoft Teams Copilot, Claude and ChatGPT. Durman felt he was being asked to offload his thinking, and he says that conflicts with his humanism. With help from the American Humanist Association (AHA), he requested an accommodation under Title VII, the federal law that lets employees ask for changes to work requirements on religious grounds. In a letter dated September 25, 2026, the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity granted it. A senior manager wrote that he “is excused from personal use of AI to complete his tasks.” He must still attend meetings, cooperate with colleagues who use AI, and submit materials through AI-enabled sites where required.

His argument. Durman’s case is about moral formation rather than distrust of the output. Thinking through his work, his ethics and how he treats people is, he told RNS, “a key component in being able to develop myself as a moral person,” and offloading that labor “regardless of whether it’s taxing or not, is undercutting my ability to be a moral actor.” His letter to the university cited the 2003 Humanist Manifesto and said that substituting “automated machine processing for human presence, authentic listening, and personal responsibility” conflicts with his obligation to put human dignity and flourishing first.

Why a humanist qualifies. Federal courts have treated humanism as a religion for these purposes. AHA staff attorney Alexandria Huiskens called humanism “a comprehensive way of life” that deserves the same room at work as Christianity or Islam. Douglas Laycock, an emeritus law professor at Virginia and Texas, explained the legal test: the belief must be sincere, “a deeply held ethical commitment that’s analogous to a religious commitment,” and the employer has to investigate that as a question of fact.

How much it settles. Not much, legally. It was an employer’s decision after what Huiskens called “a very collegial meeting” that found “no undue burden” on his department. No court ruled. LinkedIn’s editors made the same point: “both examples were employer decisions, not court rulings.” It is also not the first AI exemption. Durman was partly inspired by Erin Maus, a Unitarian Universalist software engineer who had earlier won an exemption from her employer on religious grounds. The AHA calls Durman’s case the first for a self-identified humanist.

The backdrop. RNS places the case alongside broader religious and public skepticism of AI. It cites a Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll in which 57% of Americans called AI bad for society, and Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which warned that concentrated AI power “tends to become opaque and evade public oversight.”

Notable quotes

• “Offloading that labor, regardless of whether it’s taxing or not, is undercutting my ability to be a moral actor.” — David Durman
• “It has to be a deeply held ethical commitment that’s analogous to a religious commitment.” — Douglas Laycock
• “David is excused from personal use of AI to complete his tasks.” — University of Kentucky OEO letter

Connections

• Humanism — the belief system that grounded the accommodation, which courts have treated as a religion under federal law.
• Religious Freedom — Title VII religious accommodation, the route a Christian postal worker took to the Supreme Court in 2023 over Sunday work, applied here to AI.
• Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Future of Work — an early sign that workplace AI mandates will run into conscience claims.
• Thinking, Critical Thinking — Durman’s position is that thinking is formative, not only productive, so outsourcing it costs the thinker something even when the output is fine.
• Human Flourishing — the value his letter puts ahead of efficiency.

A private copy of the RNS article is kept in the wiki’s attachments against link rot.