A critically important federal court ruling in 2025 concerned the seal of the Confessional.

As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) explained in the 2026 Annual Report of the Committee on Religious Liberty, Washington state’s law on mandatory reporting of child abuse exempts persons who learn of such abuse “in a legally privileged setting, such as the attorney-client privilege.”[1]

 

But in 2025 the law was amended “to specifically eliminate the privilege for clergy who receive such information in the context of confession, while leaving other forms of privilege intact.”[2] The rationale is that society’s duty to protect children overrides confidentiality privileges, especially if a priest learns of child abuse through the confession of the abuser.

 

But how does that differ from an attorney whose client confesses to him that he has committed the child abuse he stands is accused of? Or the psychiatrist whose patient confesses to such horrific abuse? Why single out only the priest-penitent privilege to be overridden?

 

The reason seems obvious: public revulsion against child abuse presented an opportunity to attack the seal of the Confessional, long a target of secularists hostile to the Catholic Church. Fortunately, a federal district court saw through this, finding that “[T]he text of the bill and its legislative history arguably evince the intentional abrogation of a practice that the legislature understood to be religiously sacrosanct.”[3]

 

“Finding that the law likely violates the Free Exercise Clause,” the USCCB explained, the court “issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of the law against Catholic priests in the state. The state then folded, agreeing to enter a permanent injunction against enforcement of the law as to the Catholic sacrament of Confession or other such practice in other faiths.” Peak [4]This was an important victory. But attacks on the seal of the Confessional will continue, and we must be ever vigilant in defending our freedom to practice and protect our faith.

 

[1]U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “The State of Religious Liberty in the United States,”

2026 Annual Report of the Committee on Religious Liberty, Section VI: National Trends in Politics, Culture, and Law, Attack on the Seal of the Confessional, p. 49.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid. pp. 49-50.

[4] Ibid.