Evan Peña Quoted in HR Dive Article About Challenges Related to AI in Workplace and Religious Accommodation
Evan Peña, a San Diego-based partner in the Quarles & Brady Labor & Employment Practice Group, provided insight for an HR Dive article that explores what employers should do to prepare for religious discrimination claims from employees regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) at work.
With a growing number of religious discrimination cases on a variety of issues, many human resources professionals expect complaints related to the use of AI to be a significant issue. In the article, Peña addressed how federal courts have dealt with previous workplace religious discrimination cases and how employers should approach potential issues related to AI.
An excerpt:
HR teams also might consider past decisions the organization has made with respect to employees who refuse to use AI for nonreligious reasons, Peña said. If those employees are able to perform their work without issue, that could be damaging to any refusal to accommodate on the employer’s part. Employers aren’t wedded to past precedent, Peña said, “but it is relevant, and a jury’s going to look at that.”
Employers face a higher burden to show that a proposed religious accommodation poses an undue hardship under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act following the Supreme Court’s 2023 Groff v. DeJoy decision. There, the court held that the burden posed by an accommodation must be “substantial in the overall context of the employer’s business.”
The court’s bar can be a difficult one for employers to meet, said Peña, particularly for larger employers. For that reason, accommodation decisions are more often a function of the specific job the employee holds and whether the business can provide an effective accommodation, he added.