A newly enacted law forcing priests to reveal the details of their members’ private confessions under penalty of fine or imprisonment is illegal and violates the core rights guaranteed to every American, says the Justice Department, as it joined a lawsuit to overturn the measure and restore religious liberty.
SB 5375, passed by the overwhelmingly Democrat state Legislature and signed into law by Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, on May 2, singles out priests as mandatory reporters if they hear a member admit to child abuse or neglect during confession—which church officials say must be held in absolute secrecy for the believer’s sake.
While the state exempts other professions or classes of citizens, such as attorney-client privilege or the doctor-patient relationship, it specifically threatens clergy who refuse to rat out penitents with 364 days in jail, a $5,000 fine, and a possible civil liability on the first violation.
The law is also vague, critics say, potentially to coerce clergy into divulging their penitents’ details more frequently. Eric Kniffin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told “Washington Watch” last month that it is as though they “want mandatory reporters to err on the side of reporting” their congregation’s private lives to the secular authorities “and let the government sort it out.” The law’s vast, vague, “unanswered, undefined questions” leave a “cloud over religious liberty,” he added.
The Trump administration has intervened in a lawsuit brought against Ferguson by Roman Catholic Archbishop Paul Etienne, filed by the First Liberty Institute and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
“The seal of confidentiality is, therefore, the lifeblood of Confession. Without it, the free exercise of the Catholic religion, i.e., the apostolic duties performed by the Catholic priest to the benefit of Catholic parishioners, cannot take place,” says the Justice Department’s intervention in Etienne v. Ferguson, which is pending before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
“Laws that explicitly target religious practices such as the Sacrament of Confession in the Catholic Church have no place in our society,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “Senate Bill 5375 unconstitutionally forces Catholic priests in Washington to choose between their obligations to the Catholic Church and their penitents or face criminal consequences, while treating the priest-penitent privilege differently than other well-settled privileges.”
In addition to the nation’s 62 million Roman Catholics, “Washington’s new law also harms members of Orthodox Churches. By piercing the sacramental confidentiality, the law deters believers from confessing certain sins—or even from going to confession at all—and so prevents them from mending their relationship with God,” said the Orthodox Church in America, which has eight churches in Washington state and practices the Mystery (or Sacrament) of confession (albeit with a slightly different theological understanding) based on its ancient interpretation of James 5:16.
Eastern “Orthodox Churches teach that priests have a strict religious duty to maintain the absolute confidentiality of what is disclosed in the sacrament of confession. The purpose of this confidentiality is to protect the penitent and foster a sense of safety and trust, allowing individuals to approach God for forgiveness without fear. Violating this mandatory religious obligation is a canonical crime and a grave sin, with severe consequences for the offending priest, including removal from the priesthood,” said the Orthodox Church in America.
Alliance Defending Freedom Co-Counsel Eric Kniffin and George Ahrend filed the federal lawsuit, Orthodox Church in America v. Ferguson, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington last Monday. ADF Senior Counsel John Bursch called the Washington state law “rank religious discrimination” and urged the court to “swiftly restore this constitutionally protected freedom of churches and priests in Washington state.”
The Trump administration will now bring the full resources of the federal government into the legal battle for conscience rights, Christian liberty, and the Constitution’s unalienable First Amendment rights.
“The Justice Department will not sit idly by when states mount attacks on the free exercise of religion,” said Dhillon.
Originally published by The Washington Stand