Alliance Defending Freedom, the religious liberty law firm, recently announced Dr. Christopher Yuan’s lawsuit against Open AI has reached a court-approved settlement. That settlement includes removing anti-religious language from company policy that barred a nonprofit discount for faith-based nonprofits, including Yuan’s ministry called Holy Sexuality.
With help from ADF attorneys, Dr. Christopher Yuan sued the powerful company in May after it refused to give his ministry the same 20% discount it allows for secular nonprofits that subscribe to ChatGPT.
Yuan and his Holy Sexuality ministry create Bible-based video curriculum for teenagers. The ministry is based in San Diego.
Open AI, which reported $3.7 billion in revenue in 2024, is headquartered in San Francisco.
ADF attorney Matthew Hoffmann tells AFN a corporate policy treated religious nonprofits differently, solely because they are religious, which violates California law. That law, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, prohibits California businesses from discriminating based on sex, religion, race, and other factors.
“I think it's just completely irrational,” Hoffman says of the now-changed policy. “There is no good explanation because there's no reason why other groups should be prioritized over religion.”
One possible explanation, however, is the wealthy, high-tech corporation is no friend of religion and, in particular, Christianity.
Yuan himself has raised that possibility. In a statement, posted after the settlement, he said tech companies are discriminating against religion because they are “emboldened by intersectional ideology and anti-Christian sentiment.”
Beyond just a corporate policy, Hoffman asks if that policy will also find its way into the field of artificial intelligence
“If these large language models are learning from biased material,” he reasons, “they're going to output biased responses and just perpetuate this negative cycle of anti-religious sentiment.”
